. .. I I, ■ , , ■ '
Troubles of /2>ird
tloufekeeplodfv
If the average small hoy knew what
e hard time birds have to rear their
families under the best conditions he
would hesitate to disturb their nests,
even if there was no law to threaten
him with punishment if he did so.
There was a patient pair of robins,
for instance, who built their first nest
more than six weeks ago in a low
apple tree in the orchard. Presently
there were two blue eggs in the nest.
Then came the first catastrophe. Next
morning the nest was empty. On the
ground under the tree lay one of the
eggs with two holes picked in its shell.
That was the work of a big, sneaking
hluejay, if one may judge by the fact
that the same afternoon the robins
were seen chasing a scolding jay about
the orchard and that the picture of
the jay has long been in the birds'
rogue gallry.
Immediately after the destruction of
their eggs the robins set about build
ing a second nest on another limb of
the same tree. They got so far as to
have three blue eggs In this prospec
tive cradle when a red squirrel came
down one afternoon from the oaks ad
joining the orchard and made a robins’
egg omelet of what he found there.
Then a third nest was built and on
that the old mother bird has now been
sitting for two weeks. Perhaps she
will succeed this time In rearing an !n
, . . .... ... i. ... i
THE ROBINS. |
terestlng family, but there is an old
white cat with three kittens under the
hay mow stairs, who spends hours
standing motionless, all but the tip
of her tail, In the tall orchard glass
and who thinks that a dinner of young
robins would do her own children
much good.
There is a little yellow warbler who
built down In the pasture wood lot
and who had equally hard luck In a
different and really peculiar way.
The yellow warbler’s nest wa3 in
Itself an exquisite thing. It was built
near the top of some thick bushes,
about five feet from the ground. It
was lined with soft, silky gray mosses
and I breads of vegetable tissue and it
looked like the inside of a spun silver
cup. It was built so artfully that
leaves and branches hid it on all sides,
and it took hard work and good luck
to find it even after one knew it was
there. It was found the day It had
been completed, when the mother bird
was just ready to begin laying her
eggs.
But there was another bird out that
day, sueaking through the bushes like
a pickpocket, looking for a chance to
leave one of Us eggs in a newly built
uest. The sneak was a cowbird, which
never builds a nest of its own and dis
misses the whole subject of maternal
responsibility from its mind when it
lias left an egg in some other bird's
nest. One of these big brown and
black cowblrds found the yellow warb
ler’s dainty little nest and laid one of
its big spotted eggs there. Then it
flew back to the pasture again, and got
down on the ground among the cat
tle, with others of its sneaking kind.
Sometimes when a yellow warbler
finds a cowbird’s egg in its nest it
will build a false bottom over the egg
and proceed to make Its nest above
It on the second floor. But this poor
warbler got no such opportunity. This
has been a cold, late spring, and the
warblers and other similar birds have
been slow in bulldlug. Also there
were many cowblrds about, looking for
a chance to saddle off the hatching and
rearing of their young on their bet
ters, and before the yellow warbler
mother could get a chance to lay one
of her own eggs In the nest she had
built it was actually filled almost to
overflowing with four big cowbird
eggs. This is believed to be the record
in the way of cowbird greediness. Of
_ — ~ a. — — — — — ^
ten two eowbird eggs are found in the
same nest, but rarely if ever have
four been found.
The greed of the eowbird in thus
! completely occupying the warbler's
: nest brought, its own punishment with
1 it. The warbler, disgusted, abandoned
f—■ ■" ■ . ....1
COWBIRDS STOLE THE WHOLE
NEST.
the nest completely. A day or two
later something—hoy or beast—had
discovered the deserted nest and stolen
all four of the eggs.
If the yellow warbler builds another
nest and succeeds in raising its brood
where the cowbirds cannot find it the
first catastrophe may be al! for the
best. Even when only one cowbird's
egg is laid in a nest and is hatched
out with three or four young warblers
the latter are likely to got far the worst
of it. The young cowbird from the
moment it breaks the shell is bigger
and greedier than its foster brothers
and sisters. It will crowd them to the
side and insists on eating much more
than its share of the food which the
yellow warblers bring for their
young.
Across the barbed wire and rail
fence from the warbler's nest is a big
woods pasture. Close to the fence
grow thick clumps of hazel brush
and wild crab and plum trees. In
some places the thicket is so dense
that a man has hard work in forcing
his way through it. High up in those
tangles, six or eight feet from the
ground, two pairs of catbirds have
built their nests. They are apparently
safe from all but other bird enemies,
for the long, sharp thorns and the in
terlacing branches protect them from
attack from the ground. This is evi
MOURNING DOVE llROODS ON THE
GROUND.
dently a favorite nesting place of
theirs, for in the branches there are
the ruins of nests evidently two or
three years old.
Close to the catbird's tangle and ly
ing on the ground In a poor apology
for a nest were found a recently
hatched mourning dove and a white
egg from which the little bird had
not yet picked Its way. This nest was
close to the stalks of some close grow
ing bushes and would never have been
discovered If the old mother bird had
not gotten up and flown away In a
! terrible fright when the nestseeker was
! four or five feet awray.
With the Instinct of most of the
ground building kind the old bird went
j off with an apparently broken wing
| and did her best to decoy danger away
i from her helpless little ones. It Is a
wonder how these little doves escape
i the prowling cats which hunt in the
raeaaows and woods all about, but fm
far they have done finely, and on Sat
urday last the elder of the two was
already able to use his wings in a
. flight of three or four feet.
Out in an old telephone pole which
stands at the corner of two country
roads is a regular birds’ flat building.
About fifteen feet up from the ground,
just high enough up to be the despair
of small boys, is a small hole leading
down to a circular chamber. Here a
bluebird family ftas Its home. Five
feet up is another and lnrger hole. This
I is the front door to the residence of a
redheaded woodpecker. At present the
youug woodpeckers are just getting
! ready to try their wings and at almost
any time one of the youngsters may be
seen looking out of the hole at what
' must seem a strange world. Still
higher up, in the third story of the flat
building, is another opening evidently
made by a flicker, who changed his
mind and left before he completed the
j work. There Is likely to be an English
sparrow’s nest in that cavity before
the summer is over, for the ’’avian
rats" are going out Into the country
for the summer in great numbers and
hid fair as soon to he as big a nuisance
there as they are now in the city and
nearby suburbs.
There seem to be other birds beside
the bluejay which sometimes eat or at
least destroy the eggs of their fellows.
Thus the other day a horrible suspi
cion was aroused in regard to that
symbol of Innocence and gentleness,
the robin redbreast. The robin flew
from a tree down into the grass of a
swamp meadow. There be disappeared
for a moment. When he came into
sight again he was flying for dear life
with a red-winged blackbird close be
hind it shrieking "stop thief” at the
top of its voice. Of course the robin’s
IX THE BIRD'S FLAT BUILDIXG.
Intentions may have been pertectly
honorable, but why should the redwing
be roused to such a sudden pitch of
fury at the sight of him asks a writer
in the Chicago Tribune.
KumIh'i White City.
For three months in the winter
Archangel, now to become the great
western port of Russia, scarcely sees
the sun, and for three months in the
summer seldom loses sight of It. Yet
there is no city in the whole of Europe
which lies for so many months—for
the greater part of the year, in fact
under a mantle of snow; and because
of this the Russian fondly calls it ‘ the
White City.”
White, too, it Is in other ways. All
the chief buildings glare with white
paint and blink with white blinds. The
churches and In a Russian city they
are but few—are also of pure white;
only the cupolas are green, and the
crosses on their summits gold. And
white are the privato houses of the
better sort—except where Norwegians
and Germans live, for buff and blue
and red then streak and diaper the
pine walls and edge the gable ends.
But street-posts, gates, pillars, walls,
fences—these are all white. And in the
summer, for every official you see in
a blue or gray tunic, you see ton in
white caps and white uniforms. Bright
color alone is left to the women and
j children; pink blouses, green skirts,
i scarlet petticoats, orange aprons, and
blue kerchiefs are common enough;
while a group of children will always
look like a cluster of old English flow
[ era. But otherwise, in summer as in
! winter, this old city of Archangel,
now destined to be the capital of a
new Russia in the near west, is a
White City, indeed.
H«r legal Privilege*.
The following allegation in a bill for
divorce against a wife was held by the
j Supreme court at Washington not to
I state any legal ground for divorce:
j “She was quarrelsome, vicious in dis
! position, murderous in threats against
the plaintiff and his parents, hysterical
and ungovernable in temper, crazy In
her actions, and by her causeless and
unprovoked boisterousness, screaming,
| hallooing, and other wild conduct, by
day and night, an intolerable nuisance
i to all her neighbors.”
uiUfltt rtiuron in inn tuuun
The oldest Protestant church in the
.United States is St. Luke’s, at Smith
flold. Va, writes William E. Curtis in
the Chicago Kecord-Herald. St. Luke's
-wes erected In 1632, and was restored
In 1894 as nearly as possible to Its or
iginal condition and appearance. It is
a beautiful old structure of early Eng
gllah gothic, with mullioned windows
and a stately tower, and has been used
tfor public worship almost continuous
ly for two centuries and a half. The
original church erected on Jamestown
felnad by the first English colonists
| :.i North America und^r Captain .Tohn
I Smith—the church in which Pocahon
; tas was baptized and married—has all
! disappeared, except a picturesque, fvy
clad tower of brick, surrounded by a
grove of trees.
Holland Kaepi O'ri Ocean at Ray.
There are at present about 1.000
miles of sea dikes in the Netherlands.
The total length of dikes Is difficult to
estimate, and even if it could be esti
mated would mean hut little, for it
must be remembered that the dikes
have for the most part in the course
of time been destroyed and rebuilt re
peatedly. It has not been so much a
question of building them as It has
been of maintaining them and keeping
them where they were. Besides pro
tecting the country from the invasions
of both fresh and salt waters, the dikes
have served to reclaim no less than
210,000 acres, nearly all of which are
good, fertile land.—National Geograph
ic Magazine.
The man who has never written a
foolish love letter has not yet taken all
the decrees.
* 'Rouen s Overhead Ferry. I
The American vice consul in Rouen.
Prance. E. M. J Deilapiane, has writ
ten to the state department an interest
ing descriptive letter on the overhead
£erry in use here across the Seine. It
it called the Pont Transbordeur, and
, he says of it:
"This bridge, with suspended carrier,
or overhead ferry. Is of especial inter
est as being the first of lts kind in
France, or, for that matter, in Great
Jritain or America; and to appreciate
properly Its great importance and
worth one has only to call to mind the
difficulties experienced by engineers
'n crossing rivers and channels.
“The system exemplified by the
Transbordeur here at Rouen remedies
many of the defects and drawbacks in
trans-channel traffic so apparent in
many bridge and boat systems. Its ob
vious advantages are that it leaves the
channel to be crossed entirely clear at -
rmm 11 *""""* »i i ... ii ■■ i ■ him
vice much more valuable than if the
policeman had to strike the match and
apply it to the wick himself, and a
comparatively strong wind or rain
should not succeed in extinguishing
the blaze or preventing the working
of the automatic lighter. The inventor
also makes mention of a whistle in
serted in the grip end of the club.
A llor^i IlIrthdiAT.
“Did you ever hear of a birthday
party being given for a horse?” said
Lawyer Isidor Goldstrom to a Balti
more Sun reporter. “Well, I attended
one recently, and when I received the
invitation I thought it came from
some one who was ‘daffy' or a friend
who delighted in playing Jokes. The
invitation was neatly got up and
signed ‘Countess May-Be-Not.’ It an
nounced that the party would be h°ld
at Rice's lvery stable, North and Mad
all hours without requiring vessels to
make any special signals or modify
their rate of speed any more than they
would in the case of a cross-channel
ferry, and that no increase of distance
or ascent or descent is forced on the
traffic in order to cross from one shore
to the other.
“The essential part of the system
may be described as a horizontal rail
way supported by a bridge spanning
the channel and built up at such a
height as will allow the tallest masted
vessels frequenting the channel to
pass beneath. Any kind of bridge may
be used, provided the rectangular open
ing for navigation is left entirely clear,
except that the arched bridges, which
would reduce the rectangular area,
must be excluded. Suspension bridges,
however, owing to the facility they of
fer for spanning wide channels, the
great advantage they possess in per
mitting erection by “launching’ with
out any scaffolding interfering with
the navigation, the economy of their
construction, the little area they offer
to wind pressure, and, lastly, their
lightness and elegance, seem to com
mend preference in the majority of
cases. This is the kind of bridge in
Rouen.’’
light for the ‘‘COPPER,”
A genus of Camden, N. J., has pat
ented an appliance which he thinks
POLICEMAN S CLUB LAMP.
will be of value to the policeman in
making his rounds at night through
dark alleys and hallways, the device
being a lamp for insertion in the end
of the clut), with means for opening
and closing the apparatus automatic
ally. The flame is produced by either
a torch or candle, which is mounted on
a sliding disk inside the hollow end
of the club, a coileu spriug back of
the disk forcing it outward as soon
as the button is pressed to release the
automatic lock. The sliding plate
shown at the side is hollow and is pi*
vlded with a match holder and an ar
; rangement which draws the match
head across a roughened platp at just
the proper instant to ignite it and
light the wick of the candle or lamp
as it is presented at the opening in
the end of the club. By using this
form of lighter the flame can be in
stantly produced Just at the desired
I moment for use, which makes the de
| ison avenues. I thought I would
; chance it—go and take in the sur
roundings secretly, and if tricked get
away without any one knowing I was
there. I nearly forgot the year I was
living in when I saw a crowd of
guests gathered and ‘Countess May
Be-Not,’ a fine thoroughbred horse,
all decorated with purple-colored rib
bons and the center of attraction.
Robert S. Weisenfeld, the owner, had
given the party in the animal’s honor.
It was the same as any other birth
day party. There was good music, a
luncheon and plenty of liquid refresh
ments to supply enjoyment for the
guests. It seemed that even the horse
knew what was going on.’’
SINCLE TREE HAMMOCK.
The novelty of the hammo. k shown
in the picture consists in its ability
to keep on the shady side of the tree
at all hours of the day, and it also ;
SWINGS LATERALLY AROUND
THE TREE.
has the advantage of being adapted for
use on a single tree or the side of a
house, where only one support is avail
able. Of course, it will not curve from
end to end like the ordinary ham
mock, but it has a swinging motion of
its own, and it can be made quite as
comfortable for resting as those now
in use. The attachment to the tree is
made by a ball and socket joint and
the two hooks, with the suspending ca
bles, the joint allowing the hammock
to swing laterally in substantially the
same plane. By providing duplicate
heads for suspending the hammock it
can be moved around the tree into an
c*her position as the day advances,
thus always keeping under the shady
side of the tree, and when not in use
it folds up flat for storage in small
compass.
Dfitntr Hnoliot llogi.
Little sachet bags of thin silk may
be bung unobstrusively upon the backs
of chairs to supply a faint, elusive
scent to a room, if that Is liked. These
should be filled with dried loaves of
sweet geraniums, lemon verbena and
lavender mixed, or of the lemon ver
bena alone if that delightful o^.or is
preferred. They make sweet sachets
for the handkerchief box or the linen
| closet and the bureau drawer.
WHEN TO EXPECT A PANIC.
Eitraragunt NpernUHon In R«»l E»|at«
Option* » I'oreruunfr.
In the opinion of Mr. Alexander H.
Revell, a writer in the Saturday Eve
ning Post, undue speculation in real
estate options is the invariable pre
cursor of the financial panic. The man
who takes his cue from real estate
; speculation and begins to husband his
resources and prepare for a storm
when he sees this feature of business!
activity reaching beyond the limits of
sound, permanent investment will gen
erally be in time to escape the crash.
I If he waits for the beginning of tho
drop in this form of security he may
depend upon being caught lu tho
wreck. The earth's surface seems to
be about the last thing to which money
desiring quick increase, in the form
of speculative profit, i3 Inclined to
turn. All other forms of security ap
pear more tempting to the speculative
instinct because more active and
changeable. So long as the main
movement of real estate is in the na
ture of a permanent investment all is
Well. Then buyers make their pur
chases for personal use, or on the basis
of what the property will yield in
rentals or steady income of any na
tur«. They are safe guides. But
when men buy this most stable and
. ubstantial of securities on a "mar
; gin" payment to be sold quickly by
force of high-pressure “booming”—
; the creation of an exaggerated view
| of values—then tho time is ripe for
the thoughtful student of affairs to pre
pare for financial trouble. I
BRIDE AT LAST SAID "OBEY.”
Hut It XVai Only After tho (irooni Hail
Started to I.oairp.
Being an Episcopalian I always use
the formal printed service of tho
prayer Wook. In this the greatest
stickler is "obey.” One day a couple
■ came to me bringing as witnesses the
parents of both bride and groom. Ev
; erything proceeded smoothly to the
point, "love, honor and oboy,” when
the bride refused to say tho last. I
repeated it and waited. Again she
refused, and I shut up my book. Then
there was a scene. They talked it over,
and the more seriously they argued
and discussed the more stubbornly sho
refused. The parents became angry,
the groom excited and the bride hys
terical. To humor her lie Joined in
flic request to have me leave it out.
But I liked the fellow, and decided
that a little sternness from me in the
present might be a favor to him in the
future. So I told them I had no au
thority to change it, and would not do
so. I tried to show the foolishness of
her objection, but it was no use. Fin
ally I said to him, “Well, this house
hold must have a head somewhere. I
will leave it out for her if you will
say it.” Then it was his time to re
fuse, which he did. He gathered up
his hat and started for the door, when
she sprang after him, led him back by
the hand, looked meekly up at him and
<^id it.—Ladies’ Home Journal.
Oriental Swearing;.
A professor of languages on his re- Sa
turn to England from India re marked
upon the paucity of invectives used
hy Anglo-Saxons when compared with
the abundance known to orientals.
He gives a case which came under his
own notice. A Hindoo man servant,
whom he had dismissed for dishonesty,
sought an interview with his former
master. When he found it impossible
to gain admission he sat under the
window and the “swearing” process
began. He cursed the professor along
the genealogical tree back to the first
ancestor of his race. Then he dwelt
upon every detail of his anatomy, from
the top of his head to the end of his
toes. ‘‘For three consecutive hours
he sat and swore,” says the professor,
“without once repeating a phrase.”
While traveling on the underground
railway in Loudon some men entered
the same compartment and inter
spersed their remarks with the com
monest forms of "swearing.” The pro
fessor politely asked them to desist,
whereupon he was told to mind his
own business. He at once commenced
to translate into English some speci
mens of eastern oaths which he had
heard. The men shied from him as
if he had the plague, and at the next
station sought another compartment.
Poor Lo'« Salvation h Work,
The attitude of our government to- j,
ward the Indian, In allowing him in
idleness to follow his own untram
meled will on the reservation. Is a
relic of the old Trench and Spanish
original discoverers. Are these wards
of the government never to have
homes, but be always condemned to
tribal relations? Are they never to
know the mental uplifting (or side
lifting or down-lifting) of a wife's
hands, but be always fated to burden
bearing squaw life? Some day a states
man will arise and point the way for
these aboriginal Americans to become
inon and women among us, and truly
citizens of our states. Until that
time—until Indians are alienated from
their savage surroundings—their treat
ment is a proposition uot reached by
any pink-tea standard of ethics._
National Magazine.
Prim Fenrer or itnW.
One of the most rpmarkablo swords
men of the day in Italy, one of those
Old World nations In which the
knowledge of fencing not only is an
accomplishment, but a prime necessity
of life, Is 12-year-old Signor Attilio
Monferrito. This lad has just won
the national fencing tournament in
Bologna. His antagonists were thq
most colebrated fencers in Italy, in
cluding Sartori, whose assistant At- -
tilio used to be. Now the former cm- y
ployer. who was a prize winner In hla
day, Is beaten by a mere boy.