When the young birds had flown I brought home the nest as a unique souvenir of summer. Removed from the picturesque setting it was no longer interesting; its charm was that of environment; its beauty the marvel of adaptation. So surely does Nature equip each bird with an individuality that distinguishes it from all others! Not only have they common rules followed in obedience to the law of instinct, but each species has special gifts developed according to the law of its nature, a law of harmony so delicately enforced that the law itself is not perceptible. INSECT LIFE UNDERGROUND. L. O. HOWARD, PH. D., Entomologist U. S. Department of Agriculture, and Curator Department of Insects, U. S. National Museum. There is an old German child's story of a little girl who being told that if she could find a place to hide her first silver piece where no eye could see her, and then dance round it three times, she would have her wish. She sought everywhere for such a place, but always some bird or squirrel or mouse or insect was near by, and even when she dug beneath the ground, there too were little crawling creatures watching her. It may be said that this story was meant to show that animal life is found almost everywhere, and certainly beneath the surface of the ground there are hundreds of kinds of insects working steadily away at their different occupations; for whatever disagreeable things you may find to say about insects, you can never justly call them lazy. The scriptures recognized this fact in the well-known command to the sluggard, and the old nursery rhyme about the "busy bee" emphasizes the same characteristic. The truest underground insects are those which pass their entire lives beneath the surface of the earth; which are born there, live and grow and die without seeing the light of day. Such, for example, are the true cave insects, a number of forms of which are found in the great caverns in different parts of the world. Some of these insects feed upon the vegetable molds and low forms of plant life found in caves; others feed on dead animal matter and still others upon living insects. Nearly all are of pale colors and are blind or nearly so, for they have no use for eyes in the darkness. All are supposed to be descendants of above-ground forms, which through many generations of life in the darkness have lost their color and their power of sight. The genealogy of these true cave forms may be guessed at with some certainty, for we know insects which are only partly transformed in structure from above-ground forms to true cave species. Such are certain beetles which live in the catacombs of Paris, and certain other insects which have been found in the old and deep burrows of the land tortoise in Florida.