Both sunstone and moonstone can be accurately imitated in glass and the distinction of the artificial from the real by ocular examination alone would be almost impossible. Glass, however, lacks the cleavage of Feldspar and is somewhat heavier and softer. The discovery of the method of making artificial sunstone is said to have been accidental, and was made at Murano, near Venice, when a quantity of brass filings by chance fell into a pot of melted glass. The product was for a long time and is still used in the arts under the name of goldstone. Sunstone is sometimes known as aventurine Feldspar, in distinction from aventurine quartz, which presents a similar appearance, owing to the inclusion of scales of mica. The term aventurine is from the Italian avventura, meaning chance, and refers to the chance discovery above referred to. Gems are occasionally cut from other forms of Feldspar than those here described, which are transparent and colorless and valued for their lustre. The varieties chiefly employed in this manner are adularia, a variety of orthoclase which is often transparent, the best specimens being obtained in Switzerland, and oligoclase, in the transparent form in which it is found near Bakersville, North Carolina. Oliver Cummings Farrington. THE WOOD HARMONY. Who knows the dim, least-traveled way Where wood-folk keep their holiday; Who knows the paths of little care Whereon the thicket-dwellers fare, Let him be heedful, lest he wake Unfriendly echoes in the brake, Or dare, with alien thought, to find His way among the timid kind. Let him beware, then, for they know The subtle footsteps of a foe. But all the wee wood-fellows spare Such welcome as they ever share To him who finds in dale and dell That undefined, familiar spell That greets the faith prepared to meet A faith as beautiful and sweet. —Frank Walcott Hutt. THE COTTAGE BY THE WOOD. It was my good fortune to spend some months in a cozy little cottage in a suburban district, the natural surroundings of which were such as to at once appeal to a naturalist, aside from furnishing ample opportunity for rest and quiet. The large lawn belonging to the property, with its abundance of shade trees, fronted on the main avenue of a populous corporate town, while in the rear was a strip of woodland, which in turn was bordered by a clearing covered mainly by briars and thick low bushes, its whole length being intersected by a winding brook.