192 NATURE STUDY. 



similarly colored surface in their cage, they never settle down 

 contentedly for a sun bath. 



We watch them nestle close to the ground and close their eyes ; 

 then some movement on. the part of the hen may attract our atten- 

 tion for a moment, and, on looking back again, we are amazed to 

 find the little birds have disappeared. It is a fact that if we lose 

 sight of them even for a short time, the eye at first refuses to 

 distinguish them from the dried leaves. Their little backs are 

 dull, dark brown in color, broken by irregular fine white lines, 

 very much like the mold lines on fallen leaves, while the lighter 

 sides of the head, instead of being at all conspicuous, are exactly 

 like the lighter shades of some old leaves, the imitation being 

 more perfect from the fact of the coloring being thus broken up. 

 Even the little brush of upraised feathers in their heads — hints of 

 the beautiful recurved helmets of the old birds — appear like small, 

 frayed out pieces of grass or leaf. 



If we look toward them with half-closed eyes not a trace of the 

 birds is visible. All appear sound asleep, and the little heads sag 

 drowsil}^ to one side, but at the slightest noise each black bead of 

 an eye is wide open, and six scurrying pairs of legs, or rounded, 

 whirring wings, carry their owners to the further side of the cage, 

 as if an unfelt wind had suddenly caught up some of the dead 

 leaves before us and tossed them along the ground. It is all a 

 beautiful piece of magic, which never becomes less wonderful, no 

 matter how many times we witness it. — New York Times. 



A Punctual Bird. 



What tempts the little humming bird that we see in our gardens 

 to travel every spring from near the equator to as far north as the 

 circle, leaving behind him, as he does, for a season, many tropical 

 delights ? He is the only one of many humming birds that pluckily 

 leaves the land of gayly colored birds to go into voluntary exile in 

 the north, east of the Mississippi. How it stirs the imagination to 

 picture the solitary, tiny migrant, a mere atom of bird life, moving 

 above the range of human sight through the vast dome of the sky ! 

 Borne swiftly onward by rapidly vibrating little wings, he covers 

 the thousands of miles between his winter home and his summer 

 one by easy stages and arrives at his chosen destination, weather 

 permitting, at approximately the same date year after j'ear. — Coiut- 

 try Life in America. 



