58 



literally hung with streamers and 

 presented quite a holiday appearance. 

 There was much hope of the result, 

 but one day last week, when it was 

 thought the cherries were about ripe, 

 a member of the family went out 

 to try them. The tree bore nothing 

 but streamers — the robins had taken 

 every cherry. 



A funny little situation was de- 

 veloped at the house of Mr. Oscar 

 Fowler, on White Hall farm, the 

 property of Mr. William Ward 

 Henderson, near Elkton, Md., late- 

 ly. Mr. Fowler. lives upon the river 

 shore, and is fond of gunning and 

 fishing. For these purposes he has 

 a suit of india-rubber to protect him 

 from the rain. The season for both 

 of these diversions being about over, 

 he, a short time ago, hung his rubber 

 coat out where it could get a good 

 airing. No attention was paid to 

 it until a day or two since, when Mr. 

 Fowler thought it time to take it in 

 and put away. When he took hold 

 of it he observed a suspicious swell- 

 ing about one of the pockets, and 

 thinking he might have left a hand- 

 kerchief or some other piece of 

 property therein he put his hand in- 

 to the pocket. It came in contact 

 with something strange to him, and 

 upon withdrawing it he found a cute 

 little nest and several tiny eggs 

 snugly fixed in it. Presently he 

 heard an anxious twitter near by, 

 and, looking up, there was a pretty 

 little jenny wren begging him not 

 to destroy her spring-time work 

 Mr. Fowler placed the nest and its 

 contents in a convenient hole in an 

 apple tree near by, and now Mistress 

 Wren has a promising brood of the 

 funniest little wrens ever seen. 



Propagation of English 

 Sparrow. 



Ten pairs of English sparrows 

 were let loose in Adelaide, South 

 Australia, a few years ago, and now 



they have probably 2,000,000, not 

 spread over the colony, but crowded 

 into the settled districts, for they 

 feed almost entirely on the fruit and 

 grain produced by cultivation. A 

 recent letter from Adelaide says, 

 "The sparrows are now busy pick- 

 ing off the almond fruit buds as 

 they swell, and the peach, apricot 

 and plumb will be attended to in 

 due course. Should any buds be 

 spared, the sparrows are early in 

 their attention to the ripening fruit, 

 and the grain before ready for reap- 

 ing, will be cleared by them. In 

 the sparrows we have an enemy far 

 worse than the red rust, locust or 

 Russians, and what with the favor- 

 able climate, the absence of natural 

 enemies, and the immense breeding 

 grounds in the ranges, my impres- 

 sion is that unless some effective 

 remedy is found the whole colony 

 will, in less than twenty years, be 

 reduced to a mere sheep walk." 

 *-■••-* 



Bird or Beast. 



"I have one important item of in- 

 formation to impart. Last fall a 

 mysterious despatch was sent to the 

 British scientist at Montreal, saying 

 that the missing link had been 

 found in Australia. I went there, 

 and have brought back thirty of 

 these strange creatures, a group of 

 the ornithorynchus. This is the 

 most remarkable of scientific dis- 

 coveries. This strange animal is 

 the connecting link between birds 

 and animals. It looks like the 

 beaver, but instead of having hair 

 on its back it has scales and in place 

 of scales on its tail it has hair. 

 This in itself would not constitute a 

 missing link, but after long investi- 

 gation we find that it lays an egg 

 like a bird, but suckles its young 

 like a mammal. Its habits are like 

 the beaver's, but it is an utterly 

 heterodox creature and entirely the 

 most unnatural known." 



