THE FALL MIGRATIONS. A rush of wings through the darkening night, A sweep through the air in the distant height. Far off we hear them, cry answering cry: 'Tis the voice of the birds as they southward fly. From sea to sea, as if marking the time, Comes the beat of wings from the long, dark line. O strong, steady wing, with your rhythmic beat, Flying from cold to the summertime heat; O, keen, glancing eye, that can see so far, Do you guide your flight by the northern star? The birds from the North are crossing the moon, And the southland knows they are coming soon. With gladness and freedom and music gone, Another migration is passing on. No long, dark lines o'er the face of the moon; No dip of wings in the southern lagoon. No sweet, low titter, no welcoming song; These are birds of silence that sweep along. Lifeless and stiff, with the death mark on it, This "Fall Migration" on hat and bonnet. And the crowd goes by, with so few to care For this march of death of the "fowls of the air." --Mary Drummond, in the Chicago Times-Herald. THE WAYS OF SOME BANTAMS. Last summer, when I was out in the country, I made the acquaintance of a kind-hearted little bantam rooster, who was as funny as he was kind-hearted. An old speckled hen, who looked as if she might be a good mother, but wasn't, had brought up a family of chickens to that stage where their legs had grown long and their down all turned to pin-feathers. Very ugly they were; there was no doubt of it. Perhaps this queer mother thought so. At any rate, she turned the poor things adrift and pecked them cruelly whenever they came near her. Little "Banty" saw this unkind behavior. He was small, but his heart was big, and he set Madam Speckle an example which ought to have made her hide her head in the darkest corner of the hen-house for shame. He adopted those chickens! Each one of them was about half the size of "Banty," and to see that loving little father-bird standing on tiptoe with his wings spread, trying in vain to cover all eight of his adopted children, was a pathetic as well as a ludicrous sight. They loved him and believed in him fully. They followed him all day long, and seemed to see nothing amusing when he choked down a crow to cluck over the food he found for them, and at night they quarreled over the privilege of being nearest to him. I think bantams perhaps are more interesting than other fowls. When I was a little girl father brought three of them home. Dandy and his two little wives were all pure white and very small.