This Grouse nests on the ground, often under shelter, of a hollow log or projecting rock, with merely a few pine needles scratched together. From eight to fifteen eggs are laid, of buff or cream color, marked all over with round spots of umber-brown. [Illustration: DUSKY GROUSE.] APPLE BLOSSOM TIME. ---- The time of apple blooms has come again, And drowsy winds are laden with perfume; In village street, in grove and sheltered glen The happy warblers set the air atune. Each swaying motion of the bud-sweet trees Scatters pale, fragrant petals everywhere; Reveals the tempting nectar cups to bees That gild their thighs with pollen. Here and there The cunning spoilers roam, and dream and sip The honey-dew from chalices of gold; The brimming cups are drained from lip to lip Till, cloyed with sweets, the tiny gauze wings fold. Above the vine-wreathed porch the old trees bend, Shaking their beauty down like drifted snow: And as we gaze, the lovely blossoms send Fair visions of the days of long ago. Yes, apple blossom time has come again, But still the breezes waft the perfumes old, And everywhere in wood, and field, and glen The same old life appears in lovelier mold. --NORA A. PIPER. ---- LET US ALL PROTECT THE EGGS OF THE BIRDS. ---- ELIZABETH NUNEMACHER, in _Our Animal Friends_, writes thus of her observation of birds. Would that her suggestions for their protection might be heeded. "Said that artist in literature, Thomas Wentworth Higginson: 'I think that, if required, on pain of death to name instantly the most perfect thing in the universe, I would risk my fate on a bird's egg; ... it is as if a pearl opened and an angel sang.' But far from his beautiful thought was the empty shell, the mere shell of the collector. How can he be a bird lover who, after rifling some carefully tended nest, pierces the two ends of one of these exquisite crusts of winged melody, and murderously blows one more atom of wings and song into nothingness? The inanimate shell, however lovely in color, what is it? It is not an egg; an egg comprehends the contents, the life within. Aside from the worthlessness of such a possession, each egg purloined means we know not what depth of grief to the parent, and a lost bird life; a vacuum where song should be. People who love birds and the study of them prefer half an hour's personal experience with a single bird to a whole cabinet of "specimens." Yet a scientist recently confessed that he had slain something like four hundred and seventy-five Redstarts, thus exterminating the entire species from a considable range of country, to verify the fact of a slight variation in color. One would infinitely prefer to see one Redstart in the joy of life to all that scientific lore could impart regarding the entire family of Redstarts by such wholesale butchery, which nothing can excuse.