The plovers resemble the snipe in structure, but are smaller, averaging about the size of a thrush. Their bills also are shorter. They have three toes usually; their bodies are plump; short, thick necks, long wings, and in some instances they have spurs on the wings. They pick their food, which is largely of an animal nature, from the surface of the ground, instead of probing for it, as their shorter bills indicate. The flesh of the killdeer is not highly regarded as a food. [Illustration: KILLDEER. 2/3 Life-size. FROM COL. F. KAEMPFER. A.W.MUMFORD, PUBLISHER, CHICAGO. COPYRIGHT 1900, BY NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO.] COTTON TEXTILES. II. W. E. WATT, A. M. Cotton is spun and woven into so many useful forms that we could hardly live without it since we have become so thoroughly accustomed to the comforts and luxuries it supplies to us. From the loose fiber that we use in treating our teeth when they get to troubling us to the delicate lace handkerchief which is such a dream of the weaver's art we use cotton for our commonest and our most extraordinary purposes. Muslin takes its name from Mosul, in India, where it was first made. Although muslin is now made in both Europe and America in great quantities, the kind that is most famed for its fineness is that from Dacca, India. To get an idea of the fine threads used in making the rarest of this muslin we must note that one pound of cotton is spun into three hundred eighty hanks of thread with eight hundred forty yards of thread in each hank. This means that one pound of cotton is spun out to the length of 319,000 yards, or over one hundred eighty-one miles. One pound of this thread would, if it could be stretched out without breaking, reach from New York City up the Hudson to Albany, and there would still be enough of it unused to reach over to Saratoga. Ten pounds would reach from New York city to Omaha, with enough left over to reach back to Chicago. It is even possible to exceed this in fineness if we do not care for use. To show the perfection of a machine, a thread of the fineness of 10,000 has been spun. If this could be strung out, as suggested above, it would reach 4,770 miles. One pound of the finest fiber has thus been spun so that it would reach from New York to Naples, Italy, and there would still be enough of it left to reach half-way back to London on the return trip.