There are eighteen varieties of willow, several of the alder, but throughout the United States there is only one kind of beech. The ironwood is often wrongly called the beech. The hard and soft pine are interesting trees. The soft especially is a favorite for the sawyer, a beetle with long horns, who cuts large holes through the wood. When obtaining your specimen from the thorn tree you may be fortunate enough to see the shrike getting his breakfast from the thorns where he had placed it some time before. The locust with its fragrant racemes of white blossoms in the spring and long seed pods in the fall will call for attention, and you may perhaps receive, as I did, a locust seed from the tree planted by George Washington at his Mount Vernon home many years ago. The shumachs and white birches are very artistic and sought out by all artists, for who does not want to put a white birch into a landscape! Every one knows the black birch by its taste. The laurel has a pretty, fine grain. The witch hazel is another favorite for its medicinal qualities as well as its popularity for being the last blossom of the autumn. And many others will be added from the shrubs and vines until your collection, just from your own town, will number nearly, if not quite, one hundred. You will thus, too, have become interested in all nature and will be able more fully to appreciate all the beautiful things God has given us to use and enjoy. BIRD WORTH ITS WEIGHT IN GOLD. Possibly the rarest of all feathered creatures is the "takahe" bird of New Zealand. Science names it _Notornis Mantelli_. The first one ever seen by white men was caught in 1849. A second came to white hands in 1851. Like the first it was tracked over snow, and caught with dogs, fighting stoutly, and uttering piercing screams of rage until over-mastered. Both became the property of the British museum. After that it was not seen again until 1879. That year's specimen went to the Dresden museum at the cost of $500. The fourth, which was captured last fall in the fiords of Lake Te Anau, in New Zealand, has been offered to the government there for the tidy sum of $1,250. Thus it appears that the bird is precious; worth very much more than its weight in gold. The value, of course, comes of rarity. The wise men were beginning to set it down as extinct. Scarcity aside, it must be worth looking at--a gorgeous creature about the size of a big goose, with breast, head, and neck of the richest dark-blue, growing dullish as it reaches the under parts. Back, wings, and tail-feathers are olive-green, and the plumage throughout has a metallic lustre. The tail is very short, and has underneath it a thick patch of soft, pure white feathers.