Ants have brains larger in proportion to the size of their bodies than any other living creature. There are three varieties of the dog that never bark--the Australian dog, the Egyptian shepherd dog and the "lion-headed" dog of Tibet. The insect known as the water boatman has a regular pair of oars, his legs being used as such. He swims on his back, as in this position there is less resistance to his progress. Seventeen parcels of ants' eggs from Russia, weighing 550 pounds, were sold in Berlin recently for 20 cents a pound. The peacock is now kept entirely, it would seem, for ornament--for the ornament of garden terraces (among old-fashioned and trim-kept yew hedges he is specially in place)--in his living state, and for various æsthetic uses to which his brilliant plumage and hundred-eyed tailfeathers are put when he is dead or moulting. But we seldom eat him now, though he used to figure with the boar's head, the swan and the baron of beef on those boards which were beloved by our forefathers, more valiant trenchermen than ourselves. Yet young peahen is uncommonly good eating, even now, at the end of the nineteenth century, and in the craze that some people have for new birds--Argus pheasants, Reeve's pheasants, golden pheasants and what not--to stock their coverts, it is a wonder that some one has not tried a sprinkling of peacocks. SPRING FASHIONS. ELLA GILBERT IVES. Even in birddom some of the styles come from Paris, where the _rouge gorge_ smartens up his red waistcoat as regularly as the spring comes round. Our staid American robin tries to follow suit, though he never can equal his old-world models. Even the English redbreast excels him in beauty and song. I must tell the truth, as an honest reporter, though I am not a bit English, and would not exchange our _Merula migratoria_ for a nightingale; for beauty is but feather-deep, and when our robin shines up his yellow bill--a spring fashion of his own--the song that comes from it is dearer than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That little relative of his whom our forefathers called the "blue robin," has the same rufous color in his waistcoat, though it stops so short it always seems as if the stuff must have given out. No Parisian or London dandy set the style for his lovely coat. If ever a fashion came down from heaven, that did; and it came to the fresh, new world and stopped here. No blue-coats perch on the rails in old England; perhaps because there is never clear sky enough to spare for a bird's back. We have so much on this continent, that half a dozen birds dress in the celestial hue; some of them, like the jay, all the year round.