I walked up my garden path as I was coming home from shooting. My dog ran on before me; suddenly he went slower and crept carefully forward as if he scented game. I looked along the path and perceived a young sparrow, with its downy head and yellow bill. It had fallen from a nest (the wind was blowing hard through the young birch trees beside the path) and was sprawling motionless, helpless, on the ground, with its little wings outspread. My dog crept softly up to it, when suddenly an old black-breasted sparrow threw himself down from a neighboring tree and let himself fall like a stone directly under the dog's nose, and, with ruffled feathers, sprang with a terrified twitter several times against his open, threatening mouth. He had flown down to protect his young at the sacrifice of himself. His little body trembled all over, his cry was hoarse, he was frightened to death; but he sacrificed himself. My dog must have seemed to him a gigantic monster, but for all that, he could not stay on his high, safe branch. A power stronger than himself drove him down. My dog stopped and drew back; it seemed as if he, too, respected this power. I hastened to call back the amazed dog, and reverently withdrew. Yes, don't laugh; I felt a reverence for this little hero of a bird, with his paternal love. Love, thought I, is mightier than death and the fear of death; love alone inspires and is the life of all.--IVAN TOURGUENEFF. The first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint, silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the redwing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell!--H. D. THOREAU. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,--the same sweet, powerful song as of yore.--_Ibid._ Walden is melting apace. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song sparrow from the bushes on the shore,--_olit, olit, olit--chip, chip, chip, che char--che wis, wis, wis_. He, too, is helping to crack the ice.--_Ibid._ The bluebird carries the sky on his back.--_Ibid._ 6. One of the most interesting features of a Bird Day program will be the personations of birds. The following was given by a boy in the seventh grade:-- One day in February a gentleman and his wife stopped beside the wall of old Fort Marion, in St. Augustine, to listen to my song. The sun was shining brightly, and little white flowers were blooming in the green turf about the old fort. It was not time yet to build my nest, so I had nothing to do but sing and get my food and travel a little every day toward my Northern home.