The Audubon Societies 



205 



feeling that "the high tide of the year" is coming now, "flooding back with a 

 ripply cheer" everything which has for months been bare and chill and dead. 

 By means of the keen senses and delicate imagination of the poet, we may 

 come nearer to the heart of Nature, and may better understand why she has 

 been called ''Mother Nature." And let this thought of the motherhood of 

 Nature be very clear in our minds as we go out into the fields among butter- 

 cups and cowslips and daisies, with life murmuring and glistening everywhere — 

 "whether we look or whether we listen." 



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A GROUP OF BIRD-HOUSES MADE BY BOYS OF THE SIXTH, SEVENTH AND 

 EIGHTH GRADES OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF NORWALK, OHIO, AT THE SUGGES- 

 TION OF THE FEDERATION OF WOMEN'S CLUBS. 



We have seen many times before, perhaps, grass and trees and sky; but it 

 is a beautiful thought and a wonderful one that "there's never a leaf or a 

 blade too mean to be some happy creature's palace," and that over all "the 

 warm ear of Heaven is softly laid!" 



It is our pleasant task to find these palaces and their inmates, and to learn 

 how Nature is the mother of all forms of life. 



In preceding exercises, much has been said about the necessity of food, not 

 only for birds but, also for all other living creatures. We have tried to dis- 

 cover some of the ways in which birds get food, as well as some of the places 

 where they find it. But, if food-getting alone were the chief end of life, there 

 would soon be no life at all upon the earth; because in a short span of years, 

 months, or even days, any single creature must live out its allotted time and 



