112 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they this year set up their household in a new spot, selecting the 

 letter-box. One of the boards of the frame of the box having be- 

 come detached, an opening was made in it large enough to allow 

 them to pass back and forth. This box is fixed to a little foot- 

 gate connected with the large wagon-gate, which is opened and 

 shut more than a hundred times a day ; about twenty inches 

 above it is a bell that sounds loudly enough to be heard within the 

 house, two hundred and fifty feet distant, which is rung every 

 time the little gate is opened. I should say that, as soon as I saw 

 my birds take the box for their house, I asked the postman to put 

 nothing more in it ; but when I perceived that the nest was in 

 building, it was nearly done, and the letter-box had been used as 

 such for nearly two days without the birds being troubled by it ; 

 and I should add that during those two days the box was emptied 

 by a groom too small to see to the bottom of it, and the nest being 

 in a corner, he had not seen or disturbed it. There are now four 

 eggs in the nest, and the birds have begun to sit upon it. 



It is therefore evident that these redstarts as well as the red- 

 throats had formed a correct idea of the kindliness of their host, 

 that it had taken deep root in their little brains, and that the con- 

 fidence they showed in us was the result of very attentive, precise, 

 and just observations which they had been able to make upon the 

 inhabitants of my house. Translated for The Popular Science 

 Monthly from La Nature. 



SKETCH OF JOHN ERICSSON. 



arts of marine engineering and naval construction have 

 -L been revolutionized through the inventions of Captain Erics- 

 son. As is remarked in a passage cited by Mr. F. C. Church, 

 in his biography of him, "in the closing years of his life he 

 could look back upon 'a change in the physical relations of 

 man to the planet on which he dwells, greater than any which 

 can be distinctly measured in any known period of historic time/ 

 and this he had no small part in creating." 



JOHN ERICSSON was born at Langbanshyttan, in the province 

 of Wermland, Sweden, July 31, 1803, and died in the city of New 

 York, March 8, 1889. His ancestry is traced back to the family 

 of Leif Ericsson, the son of Eric the Red, the Norse discoverer of 

 America. He was also related to Thorwaldsen, the sculptor, who 

 was descended, according to Mr. John Fiske, from the son of Thor- 

 finn Karlsefne, the first white child born on American soil. His 

 father, Olaf Ericsson, was a proprietor of mines ; his mother was 

 a daughter of an ironmaster, who was possessed of gifts which, 



