older one, and will often surpass their teacher; few become first-rate.

The nest of the nightingale is not built in the branches, or in a hole, or hanging in the air, or quite on the ground, but is very near it. It is not easily found unless the movements of the bird betray it. The materials are straw, grass, little sticks, dried leaves, all jumbled together with so little art that one can hardly see it when it is right before him. If the same materials were seen anywhere else, they would seem to have been blown together by the wind, and stopped just there by a fork in the branches. There are four or five smooth olivebrown eggs. The bird is about six inches long, and weighs three-quarters of an ounce. Its colors are dark brown above and grayish white below.

Izaak Walton says: "But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet, loud music out of the little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind think that miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very laborer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, 'Lord, what music hast Thou provided for Thy saints in heaven, when Thou affordest such music on earth!'"

-S. H. PEABODY.

7. THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE GLOW

WORM.

A nightingale that all day long
Had cheered the village with his song,
Nor yet at eve his note suspended,
Nor yet when eventide was ended,
Began to feel as well he might,
The keen demands of appetite,
When, looking eagerly around,
He spied far off upon the ground,
A something shining in the dark,
And knew the glowworm by his spark;
So, stooping down from hawthorn-top,
He thought to put him in his crop.
The worm, aware of his intent,
Harangued him thus, right eloquent :

"Did you admire my lamp," quoth he,
"As much as I your minstrelsy,
You would abhor to do me wrong
As much as I to spoil your song;
For 'twas the self-same Power Divine
Taught you to sing, and me to shine,
That you with music, I with light,
Might beautify and cheer the night."
The songster heard his short oration,
And, warbling out his approbation,

Released him, as my story tells,

And found a supper somewhere else.

Hence jarring sectaries may learn
Their real interest to discern,

That brother should not war with brother,
And worry and devour each other,
But sing and shine by sweet consent
Till life's poor transient night is spent,
Respecting in each other's case
The gifts of nature and of grace.
Those Christians best deserve the name
Who studiously make peace their aim,
Peace, both the duty and the prize
Of him that creeps and him that flies.

-WILLIAM COWPER.

8. THE BOBOLINK.

The happiest bird of our spring, however, and one that rivals the European lark in my estimation, is the boblincoln, or bobolink as he is commonly called. He arrives at that choice portion of our year which, in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May so often given by the poets. With us it begins about the middle of May, and lasts until nearly the middle of June. Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on its traces, and

to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than this begin the parching and panting and dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval Nature is in all her freshness and fragrance: "the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear upon the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land."

The trees are now in their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed with the sweetbrier and the wildrose; the meadows are enamelled with clover-blossoms; while the young apple, peach, and the plum begin to swell, and the cherry to glow among the green leaves. This is the chosen season of revelry of the bobolink. He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows, and is most in song when the clover is in blossom. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character.

Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing,

and flutters tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his mate, always in full song, as if he would win her by his melody; and always with the same appearance of intoxication and delight.

Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the bobolink was the envy of my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest season of the year, when all Nature called to the fields, and the rural feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin! was doomed to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in a schoolroom.

It seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me as he flew by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how I envied him! No lessons, no task, no school; nothing but holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather. Had I been then more versed in poetry I might have addressed him in the words of Logan to the cuckoo :

"Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green,

Thy sky is ever clear;

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,

No winter in thy year.

"Oh, could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make, with joyful wing,
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring."