NATUKE AND HER HARMONIES. 
3 
and tlie sense of hunger is relieved. So wlien they snatch 
the earth-worm — stirring unusually the grass blades of the 
sward beneath them — from its slimy hole, the bare appetite 
is soothed. 
Theirs is no sodden gormandie, such as we human brutes 
indulge, that would doze and snooze away the precious 
hours. No ; this food with them is but the " provender of 
praise ;" and for every mite and fragment of the manna of 
the " great Dispenser" they do obeisance in thanksgiving. 
Beautiful lesson, is it not, to us a stifif-necked and ungrate- 
ful generation? We eat to live, that we may eat again. 
They eat that they may make merry before the Lord, and 
fill his outer temple wdth the sounds of love ! 
One of the most touching— and what certainly should be 
one of the most significant objects known to us, is afforded in 
the habitual gesture of these little creatures while they drink. 
Think of a thin rivulet by the meadow-side playing at bo- 
peep with the sun beneath the thickets — and so clear withal, 
that every stem, jagged limb, or crooked, leaf-weighed 
bough, lies boldly shadowed on its pale sand, or over its 
white pebbles, like moon-shades on the snow — except that 
these are tremulous. 
Then think of the singing throng who have been anticking 
and carroUing all the morning upon the weed and clover- 
tops, out under the sun — coming into that shady place about 
"the sweltering time o' day," to cool their pipes. 
How eagerly they come flitting in, with panting, open 
throats ! How quietly, through those cool, chequered glooms, 
they drop beside that sliding crystal. 
Here a scarlet Grosbeak flames partly in the sunlight, 
while his ebony-set eyes gleam sharper in the shade ; the Jay 
sits yonder behind a plumb-tree shadow, with lowered crest 
and gaping bill — the Meadow Lark wades in and stoops until 
the wavelets carl up against its yellow breast and kiss the dark 
blotch on its throat ; the Wren comes creeping down with 
wagging tail among the mossy roots ; the Orchard Oriole, 
