Other marbles, which at the present time are great favorites with the architects, are the so-called Numidian marbles, from Algeria. These are of yellow, pink, and red color, and often beautifully mottled. Their textures are so close that they take a surface and polish almost like enamel. Since their first hardening these beds have been shattered like so much glass into countless angular fragments, and then the whole mass, with scarcely any disturbance, once more cemented into firm rock. The result is such that when large blocks are sawn into slabs, and the slabs then polished and spread out, the same series of veins, of angular blocks and streaks of color, may be traced from slab to slab, even repeating themselves with only slight changes throughout the entire series.--_Nature and Art._ THE WHIPPOORWILL. MRS. MARY STRATNER. A valued pet of ours is the whippoorwill or _Antrostomus vociferus_. When most of the other songsters have tucked their heads under their wings our whippoorwill wakes up to the business of the night. First, he darts about catching insects and moths for his babies' breakfast--for this is their breakfast time--or if his babies are not hatched he takes the insects to the faithful mother-bird on the nest. After this is done he thinks his business cares are over, and he feels free to enjoy himself. Our especial whippoorwill always selects the same spot, year after year, just about ten yards from our front door, in a clear white space on the shell-walk, and there, squatted on the ground and facing us as we sit on the piazza in the moonlight, he vociferously demands that we "whip poor Will." This demand he keeps up for a minute or two. Finding that we do not intend to heed his request, as our sturdy six-year-old Will objects, he commences a low muttering kind of grumbling. Suddenly he has a new idea and he now orders us to "Chuck Will's widow! Chuck Will's widow!" but this order, too, goes unheeded, as our Will has no widow, and if he had why should we chuck her? Now he does some more grumbling and finally flies away. We had almost forgotten him, when back he comes and squats in the same place. First he gives a low "Chuck, chuck;" then cries out shrilly, "You free Wheeler! You free Wheeler!" We know of no Wheeler who needs freeing, so again we cannot comply with his wishes. Then, as if disgusted with our unresponsiveness, he flies up in a near-by orange tree where he laments somewhat like an Irishman: "O whirr-r, whirro! O whirr-r, whirro!" He keeps this up so long that it causes some sleepy boy to say: "I wish that old bull-bat would be still." And sometimes the boy feels tempted to get up and drive him away, but he remembers in time that this feathered friend rids us of many obnoxious insects. For this reason the southern whippoorwill, or bull-bat, is protected by law in many of the states.