BY THE WAYSIDE. 
L 
sun you can hardly see it, and I suppose that 
protects her from her enemies. She hangs on 
by her slim little legs with her back down. 
. Then there is Agalena, who sits in a hole in 
the grass with a wide sheet of web in front of 
her. When a fly gets on that sheet, Zip! 
like a streak of lightning she is out and in 
again and the fly is gone. There is one very 
jolly little bow-legged yellow spider that sits 
all day in a yellow flower and catches flies. 
He moves sideways like a crab. There are 
other crab spiders but they are brown, and not 
so pretty. The best of the whole lot, I think, 
are the jumpers. They aren’t a bit afraid of 
you and if you take one on your finger (of 
course a girl wouldn’t dare), and hold up an¬ 
other finger he will jump across to it and will 
keep going back and forth. The jumpers are 
pretty, I can tell you. Some of them are red, 
some are bright shining pink and green and 
blue, and some are black with three white 
spots. I hey hold their heads up high and 
\ look so knowing. My favorite is black with 
black horns on his head and eight perfectly 
white legs. The jumpers are all called Attus, 
I J us t the way all of our family are called Smith. 
Then there are the wolf-spiders that run on 
the ground. Their name is Lycosa. They are 
dull-colored but they are very quick and clever. 
The mother carries her eggs around with her 
tied up in a white bag, and when the little 
ones hatch out they all get on to her back, 
about fifty of them, and ride around so cun¬ 
ning and comfortable. 
Wasn’t I a silly to have gone all my life 
! without knowing one spider from another? 
- — T. S. 
Helping the Birds. 
I had watched this pair of bush tits from 
the very moment when they agreed to hang 
their pocket nest on the depending branch of a 
pepper tree no higher than my upstretched 
hand. The initial was a bit of plant-fiber laid 
across a slender twig. It took the two all 
day to find sufficient fiber to lay over the twig 
for the breadth of two inches. It was rough 
and tough and clung as it was laid. Then 
same spider web over and under the fiber 
strongly woven, more fiber and many lichens. 
Long searches w 7 ere made in pear and apple 
trees where delicate mosses and lichens grew, 
m the under side of boughs where garden spid¬ 
ers had concealed round little white disks full 
>f eggs. The eggs were eaten but the round 
soft disks went into the pensile nest. A tliou- 
31 
sand things went into that nest, things no 
mortal eye ever saw nor mortal mind dreamed 
of. It was made of atoms added bit by bit, 
and cemented with moist spider web of an early 
morning. Thinking to aid the birds in their 
long task, at the end of the second week 1 
Placed a pinch of absorbent cotton in sight. 
No sooner did the bushtits spy it than they 
made inquiries, testing the nature of it by a 
pull with the beak, tossing it in the air as if 
to see if it were light or heavy, weighing it on 
scales invisible to our gross sight. Then they 
decided in favor of the cotton. They pulled at 
it from morning to night, taking it in atoms 
to the nest. At last six eggs were laid and 
incubation began. 
One day there came a storm, a hard, driving 
rain, but the bushtits kept to their business. 
Suddenly between the showers I understood 
that the eggs were birdlings; for forth the 
birds flew when the clouds parted, returning 
with minute insects which comprise the food 
of young bushtits. The storm continuing, 1 
would have placed an umbrella above the nest, 
as I often had done for the humming birds: 
but I thought, “This nest is covered, and only 
a little water can find its way in at the door¬ 
way/’ It w r as my mistake. 
Next day when the clouds lifted I knew there 
was trouble. Both birds went in at the door 
one at. a time; both birds came out and looked 
at each other in sorrow. I climbed up to see, 
and what met me was a tragedy indeed! My 
womanly instinct to meddle with what con¬ 
cerned other folks had led me to a fatal error. 
The cotton closely packed atom by atom in the 
nest bottom had refused to filter the rain, as 
natural building materials always do, and 
there, in a little pool, lay the dead birdlings, 
drowned. I could have cried. But my bushtits 
took heart of sorrow. They would try again, 
and they were wiser. They took to tearing 
that nest away, bit by bit, and weaving it on 
a higher bough. Every atom of it was taken 
save the cotton. Not a fiber of it would they 
touch. It hung all summer in tatters from 
that old pepper tree, reminding them and me of 
misfortune. And, though I still placed cotton 
all about the yard, never have the bushtits, 
this pair or any others, touched it. I truly be¬ 
lieve that they gave information. Humming 
birds, goldfinches and yellow warblers take the 
cotton; save for looking it askance the bush¬ 
tits are indifferent. Nor have they ever nested 
quite within my reach since .—From Sunset 
Magazine. 
