136 NATURE STUDY. 



est trees ; and life in the myriads on myriads of tiny eggs, 

 tucked away by insect mothers hopeful that some may es- 

 cape the sharp eyes which are looking for them in the 

 great game of hide-and-seek that is going on everywhere 

 unceasingl}'. 



This game of hide-and-seek, fearsome in its intensity, 

 awesome in its stern necessity, in which the prize is life 

 and the forfeit is death, presents many nature study les- 

 sons that may be learned as readily on a winter's day as- in 

 the more luxuriant summer time. In our Decembar 

 walks, as at other seasons, we must not neglect to show 

 the children at least passing glimpses of nature's wonder- 

 ful, far-reaching scheme of 



PROTECTIVE COIvORATION. 



Watch a brown creeper as he goes round and round the 

 trunk of a tree, always rising, until, when near the top, he 

 drops noiselessly to the foot of another tree and begins his 

 plodding, spiral round again. He is hunting for in- 

 sects and insects' eggs, hidden in the crevices of the 

 bark. The eggs are tiny, and both eggs and insects are 

 almost exactly of the color of the tree. He can by no 

 means find them all, and yet he is the most patient, per- 

 sistent, keen-eyed searcher in the world. If the insects 

 and their eggs were not thus protected b}^ their color, so 

 that some escape, there would soon be none of their kind 

 anywhere. 



But the little brown creeper has enemies, too. There 

 are hawks and owls as hungry as he, and shrikes that are 

 the most cruel of them all. Now notice how well his col- 

 or corresponds with the gray tree trunks on which he seeks 

 his food. He has no noisy companions, as the jays have, 

 to warn him of danger, and his onl}' safety is in his plain 

 coat of brown and buff, and in his quiet ways. Not all of 

 his kind escape, but some of them do, and so we have 

 brown creepers with us every year. 



