When Miss Melissa Moore, school teacher, returned to Manhattan after her summer vacation, she confided to a fellow-teacher that she had made seventy new acquaintances, and that she loved them all. Now Miss Melissa Moore, in her wildest dreams, never thought of herself as being beautiful, being a plain, honest person; she even knew that her bird-hunting costume--the short gray skirt and gray flannel shirt-waist and gray felt hat, whose brim hung disconsolately over her glasses, with no color at all to brighten her--was _not_ becoming, but if she had dreamed that Mrs. Flicker had called her an old gray moss-covered stump, she would, being only human, have cut her once and forever, and her list of new acquaintances would have numbered sixty-nine. REMEMBERED SONGS. I walked an autumn lane, and ne'er a tune Besieged mine ear from hedge or ground or tree; The summer minstrels all had fared from me Far southward, since the snows must flock so soon. And yet the air seemed vibrant with the croon Of unseen birds and words of May-tide glee; The very silence was a melody Sown thick with memoried cadences of June. Shall we not hold that when our little day Is done, and we are of men no more, We still live on in some such subtle way, To make some silence vocal by some shore Of Recollection, or to only play Soft songs on hearts that loved us long before? --_Richard Burton._ THE YELLOW-HEADED BLACKBIRD. (_Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus._) The geographical distribution of this member of the blackbird family is western North America to the Pacific Ocean, east to Wisconsin, Illinois, Kansas, and Texas. The bird is accidental in the Atlantic states. It is found generally distributed on the prairies in all favorable localities from Texas to Illinois. It is a common bird in the West, collecting in colonies to breed in marshy places anywhere in its general range, often in company with the red-winged blackbird. The nests are usually placed in the midst of large marshes, attached to the tall flags and grasses. Davie says they are generally large, light, but thick-brimmed, made of interwoven grasses and sedges impacted together. The eggs are from two to six in number, but the usual number is four. Their ground color is dull grayish-white, in some grayish-green, profusely covered with small blotches and specks of drab, purplish-brown and umber. The average size is 1.12 × .75.