NOVEMBER. 
THE TALE OF A TEAL. 
OMEWHERE, months ago, in a land 
beyond the North Sea, when he was only 
a little chap, and had swum among his brothers 
and sisters in a nice reedy pool, he had been 
caught by two old gentlemen, and had been 
adorned with a silvery-looking ring placed on 
one leg. Then he had been set at liberty 
again. 
He did not know that the ring had letters 
—an address, in fact—and a number upon it, 
and that it was hoped that whoever found him 
again, dead or alive, in any part of the world, 
would report his number to the address on 
the ring. Nor did he know that the gentle- 
men were learned professors engaged in 
probing the great mystery as to where the 
birds go. They had marked hundreds of 
birds in this way. 
He was really only a little fellow yet, a 
veritable miniature wild-duck, a pocket wild- 
duck—a teal, in fact—no more than fourteen 
inches long, but he was, in a way, wonderful. 
The wonder lay in the markings of his chestnut 
