24 
NATURE .STUDY. 
pines feeding on water plants at the pondside Ijy moonlight. Al¬ 
together a family of dull wits we might call them, for it would be 
difficult to find animals more intensely stupid. But they prize 
their pondside home, and wander around among the shrubbery and 
climb trees in perfect confidence that no animal can easily drive 
them away from their home. The mother porcupine made her 
nest in some nearby hollow log. The little ones, to the number of 
two or three in each home, were born early la.st month, and by this 
time are able to go out witli their mother and seek food as she does. 
Then there is that home in mid-air, the nest of the Baltimore 
oriole. The home surely looks enough like a hornet’s nest to de¬ 
ceive a bird of prey. Some naturalists regard it as an example of 
real “ protective mimicry.” 
In marked contrast to this bird home swaying in even the slight¬ 
est breeze is that of the kingfisher, in a hole in the solid Ijauk of 
earth by the pondside. Not far away from this bank, down in the 
deepest water, is the family of the bullheads—in some localities 
called catfish or horned pouts. How fierce and persistent is the 
mother in protecting her little ones ! In spite of this a little bull¬ 
head does now and then disappear, and some perch swims off less 
hungry than before .—SL Nicholas. 
Nature. 
BY CHARUES H. OAKE.S. 
Man hath the making of his own life’<s joy : 
I thought it lay with B'ate, and let the stream 
Of years flow on, unmindful, like the boy. 
Flecking my life by living in a dream. 
3 o Nature spied me in my tinseled den, 
And took my hand and led me forth, wide-eyed 
And month agape, far from the herds of men, 
Into the realm where she alone doth bide. 
And there — O Muse ! — the velvet summer skies — 
vSoft-wafted scents and winnowed sounds — the fair 
Flarth’s front of glories crowding to mine eyes— 
My soul burst, bnd-like, from its world of care. 
And bloomed henceforth for her who charmed it free — 
A bloom poised smiling o’er the wild brook’s glee. 
