Fortunately, this performance is comparatively uncommon, and to the most of us he is known only by his own strange, unearthly song. His notes touch chords which no other bird's song reaches. The water thrush is inspiring, the wood and hermit thrushes 'serenely exalt the spirit,' but Wilson's thrush or the veery appeals to higher feelings. All the wondrous mysteries of the wood find a voice in his song; he thrills us with emotions we can not express." FISHES THE FISH'S PLACE IN NATURE. DAVID STARR JORDAN. Some animals have their hard parts on the outside. These may be a horny coat or skin, such as the beetle has, or a double shell, like the oyster's, or a single shell, like the house of a snail. Or they may be a hard crust, like the lobster's coat of mail, or a brittle crust, like the sea-urchin's, or with tough nodules on a leathery hide, as in the star-fish, or any one of a hundred variations from these. But in all such cases there is no backbone, no true skeleton and no real skull. Then there are a host of animals that have their hard parts on the inside. When this is the case the animal has a regular head, generally with a skull inside to protect a brain from hard knocks. Then behind the skull is a backbone made up of a number of separate joints of bone. To the skeleton other bones are attached to help the animal to move himself about on land or in the water. Sometimes these bones grow out as legs, with toes and claws at the tip of them. Sometimes they take the form of wings or they may spread out into flat paddles or oars of one kind or another, and these we call fins. What shape the parts take depends on what the animal does with them, for every kind of beast is built with direct reference to his business in life. The backboned animals are the highest of all the animal kingdom. That is, in general; they can do more things, they have a greater variety of relations to the things around them, and they are more definitely fitted for a high position. Some of them are not very high nor very intelligent, even as compared with their lower brethren, the insects. The ant is a tiny creature, with no skull and no backbone, and cannot do any very big thing. But she is a very wise beast by the side of a carp or a herring. Still, on the whole, the backboned animals are the highest and as you and I both belong to that class we could never afford to confess to any doubts as to their superiority.