When the persimmons are ripe in the late fall whole families of bluebirds collect in the trees for the fruit. They love apples as well, but apples are hard unless in early spring after the frost has thawed out of them. So the birds take the persimmons first. It is at this time, when they are flitting from tree to tree, that any person who will take the trouble of hiding underneath and keeping still will catch glimpses of the yellow soles of the bluebird's feet. The legs are dark above the soles. There is a legend about this that is pleasing to know and half-way believed by lovers of legends. And one need not be ashamed of one's fondness for legends. Legends are as old as the hills, and folk-lore has preserved them. Now that the printer has become the guardian of such things, we expect a legend with every bird and beast, and a life history of either is hardly complete without. Nearly all the birds of North America are entitled to a legend through the nature-loving Indians, the first inhabitants of our country. They have left little data, but enough has been gleaned from their folk-lore to put us on the trail of many a delightful story. Some of our legends may be of recent date, but all have a fascination of their own. The ancients loved myth and weird, fanciful tales. We are descendants of the ancients, and we love the same things. Once upon a dreary time a flood of water covered all the earth. The land birds were all huddled together in a little boat, twittering to each other of a "bright to-morrow," as they do to this day. As the storm grew harder the birds grew cold, not having any clothes up to that date. This was the first rain that ever came, and caught many things, of course, unprepared. The birds had been of naked skin, like the lizards, but their beaks had grown, else how could they have been twittering to one another of a bright to-morrow? On this very morrow of song, the boat being far above the mountain-tops, a single ray of sunshine appeared at a crack in the cabin-house. The bluebird always, from the very first, being on the lookout for stray bits of sunshine, sprang to the spot, which was just big enough for his two feet. When the sun went back behind the clouds it was found that the stray bit of it which the bluebird had hopped upon remained on the soles of his feet. That is the way the bluebird came by his yellow soles.