NATURE STUDY LKSSONS. 217 



their superior notice, fit for cranks alone — birds that have 

 inspired the poets to as noble an expression of sentiments 

 as even the most beautiful women have evoked from them ; 

 see Shelley and Wordsworth, Lanier, Keats, and more ob- 

 scure ones. 



The next morning his fine song was flattened between 

 the rival crowings of a pair of cockerels. 



It was Rufus, my wild cardinal grosbeak, that roosts in 

 a dense honeysuckle-vine clinging around the porchpost 

 by the door. He has a history, he and his dainty lady, 

 that I have been three years reading, and am not yet 

 through it. She is not much about this past week, and 

 has quit roosting in the vine of nights. She is, doubt- 

 less, building down by the run. I'll see about it. 

 March ly. 



The wind carries a chill this evening. Rufus is roost- 

 ing in his wife's last year's nest in the vine. Peeping 

 around the door frame, I see only the darkened shape of 

 his head and tail against the eastern twilight sky, his body 

 is sunk from sight in the cavity. Good night, Rufus. 



Baden, Penn. 



Nature Study Lessons. XXIII. 



BY EDWARD J. BURN HAM. 



The flies, constituting the oider Diptera, are very abun- 

 dant as to individuals and numerous as to kinds. They 

 are to be found throughout the summer in houses, in the 

 fields, hovering about flowers, resting on leaves of shrubs 

 and trees and on blades of grass — almost everywhere ex- 

 cept in the water, and the young of many species are 

 found even there. 



They are easily captured, but unfortunately it is not so 

 easy to separate them into the families to which they be- 

 long. The books that have been written about them are 



