Every child who will select a favorite tree and watch it with patient, loving care will also find himself helped. Although it may not be able to talk as Jacob’s talking pine tree did, if he will but be faithful to its lessons it will teach him many useful facts; will prompt him to reach, like a tree, upward and outward, and to throw out from his life an influence as healthful and pure as the fragrance of the pine. Loveday Almira Nelson. [Illustration: KING RAIL. (Rallus elegans.) ½ Life-size. FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES.] THE KING RAIL. (_Rallus elegans._) The King Rail is the largest of the American true rails and is favored with a number of popular names. It is known as the Red-breasted Rail, the Marsh Hen, the Sedge Hen and the Mudhen. It frequents the fresh-water marshes of the eastern United States and is found as far north as Maine and Wisconsin and as far west as Kansas. This fine bird very closely resembles the clapper rail which inhabits the saltwater marshes of eastern North America. The two species, however, may be easily distinguished by the difference in size and color. The clapper rail is much smaller and the upper parts are more ashy or grayish in color and the lower parts are duller and more yellowish. Fifteen of the one hundred and eighty known species of the family Rallidæ, which includes the rails, gallinules and coots, inhabit North America. The rails are not fitted for easy flight and find safety from an enemy by running and hiding, only taking to flight when all other means of escape have been exhausted. They not only have “a body proportioned and balanced for running, but also capable of compression to the narrowness of a wedge, in order to pass readily through the thick growths of the marshes, and also to aid them, perhaps, in their peculiar habit of walking on the bottom under the water in search of food.” Their feet, because of their large size and the length of the toes, are well adapted to the soft mire and floating vegetation in which they live. With long legs and well developed muscles the rails are able to “run like very witches in their reedy mazes, and were it not for their sharp, cackling voices, their presence would scarcely be detected.” Unless approached too rudely, the female when setting on her nest will allow a very close inspection. She will seem to be as interested in the observer as he is in her. There will seem to be an expression of wonder in her face. If she is approached more closely than she likes she slips from her nest and gracefully runs through the reeds and grass and soon disappears.