and mountains, bringing with them 

 vast quantities of sand and gravel to 

 be spread over the lowlands. 



Traveling a few years ago through 

 Tunisie, I came suddenly upon a fine 

 Roman bridge of stone over a wide, 

 bare, dry river bed. It stood some 

 thirty feet above the bed of the river 

 and had once served the needs of a 

 prosperous population. Marveling at 

 the height of the bridge above the 

 ground, I asked the French station 

 master if the river ever rose to the 

 arches which carried the roadway of 

 the bridge. His answer testified to 

 the flooding capacity of the river and 

 to the strength of the bridge. He 



said: "I have been here four years, 

 and three times I have seen the river 

 running over the parapets of that 

 bridge. That country was once one of 

 the richest granaries of the Roman 

 empire. It now yields a scanty sup 

 port for a sparse and semi-barbarous 

 population." The whole region round 

 about is treeless. The care of the 

 national forests is a provision for fu 

 ture generations, for the permanence 

 over vast areas of our country of the 

 great industries of agriculture and 

 mining upon which the prosperity of 

 the country ultimately depends. A 

 good forest administration would soon 

 support itself. From January Atlantic. 



SNOW PRISONS OF GAME BIRDS. 



A LATE season snowstorm, with 

 the heavy precipitation that 

 marked the storm of Feb. 28, 

 gives the heart of the sports 

 man as well as that of the bird protec 

 tor a touch of anxiety on the score 

 of the ruffed grouse and quail. A 

 downfall of that kind, followed by a 

 thaw and then by a freeze at night, 

 means the death of hundreds of game 

 birds. The quail simply get starved 

 and cold killed, while the ruffed 

 grouse, or partridges, get locked up 

 by Jack Frost and die of hunger in 

 their prisons. 



There is a patch of woods not far 

 from Delavan, Wis., where there was 

 until recently an abundance of these 

 game birds. There was a local snow 

 storm there late in February last year, 



which was followed by a day of sun 

 shine and then by a frost which cov 

 ered the snow with a heavy crust. 

 Grouse have a habit of escaping from 

 the cold and blustering winds by bury 

 ing themselves in the big snow drifts 

 at the edges of the woods. There 

 they lie snug and warm and are per 

 haps loath to leave their comfortable 

 quarters. They sometimes stay in the 

 drift until the delay costs them their 

 lives, the crust forming and walling 

 them in. It so happened to sixteen 

 partridges in the woodland patch near 

 Delavan. With the melting of the 

 season's snows the bodies of the birds 

 were found. They were separated 

 from one another by only a few feet. It 

 was a veritable grouse graveyard. 

 Tribune. 



Warm grows the wind, and the rain 



hammers daily, 

 Making small doorways to let in the 



sun; 



Flowers spring up, and new leaves flut 

 ter gaily; 



Back fly the birdlings for winter is 

 done. -Justine Sterns. 



164 



