Each stalk is cased in crystal mail, Gem rivals gem in every vale; No gaudier crown has sunflower’s head, With dew and fragrance round it shed. Rich vitreous tubes each breeze shakes down, What shafts and columns gird our town! Fretwork and tinsel fairy fair, Wondrous stalactites everywhere. And so the emulation grows Till Sol dissolves the wafted snows. —George Bancroft Griffith. THE BIRDS IN THEIR WINTER HOME. (In the Woods.) From the region of the Great Lakes to the Gulf there is no section that contains more to interest the naturalist than the hills and forests of central Mississippi. Here no winter’s rigors chill the blood and drive the forest folk to remote or inaccessible retreats. Into this land of warmth and sunshine, this land of the ’possum, persimmon and the pickaninny, Jack Frost does not come till November is well advanced. Even then he comes only to clear the air, bring down the leaves, and announce the coming of the short, make-believe winter. Go out doors in December after the leaves have fallen and take note of the varied life in wood, field and brake; think that now in the far away North the wind howls through the leafless trees, finding few creatures hardy enough to resist his blasts save the snowbird and the hare. The blasts of chill November and chillier December have sent myriads of birds down here where food is plenty in savannah, forest and thicket. On the wooded knolls under the beeches and hollies congregate the hungry hordes, feasting on seeds and berries of the rattan, holly and smilax. Flying in and out of the briar-thickets are innumerable white-throated sparrows fleeing from frozen Canada and the lake country. A clear long-drawn whistle strikes the ear. We seek the source. A little brown bird much the size and shape of an English sparrow seated on a shrub projecting from the briars raises his head and whistles a sound as pure and free from flaw as the little spot of white upon his throat. Cheewinks as fussy as old hens toss the dead leaves about; grackles in shining black stalk dignifiedly about; while cardinals in low boughs and underbrush give a touch of vivid color to the scene just as the pink and white dresses of the girls form a pleasing contrast to the somber blacks and grays of the gentlemen’s attire at a Fourth of July celebration.