the grub of the curculio, and, hoping against hope, witness the same disaster the following year. Now, we can have these much-desired friends, the birds, by the thousand about our farms and gardens and orchards. There are many ways of attracting them and ensuring their return to us every year, but the first step involves a sacrifice: we must destroy, shut up or banish every cat from the premises. Some will find this hard to do. Puss is a very old favorite. Long before the Pharaohs she was petted, and even held sacred. The Egyptian goddess Pacht had the head of a cat. The origin of the veneration of the cat was, it is said, her mice-destroying power. In a famine-visited country like Egypt the preservation of the crops of grain was of prime importance; and the cat--allowed from its sacred character to increase and multiply as cats have the power to do--was no doubt a very effective means to that end. But in this age of progress we _can_ dispense with cats--in the country at least. I have proved by experiment that a half dozen wire-spring mice-traps, kept clean and freshly baited with toasted cheese, are better than as many cats to keep pantries and cupboards free of mice. As for rats, everybody knows that one rat-terrier in a granary is better than an army of cats. Many people, in their simplicity of soul, have believed that it is possible to have the confidence of birds without banishing the cats, and even that the cat might be so reformed that she would come to respect the rights of the birds. These people generally refer triumphantly to the "Happy Family" of Barnum--a cage containing a bird, a monkey, a cat and several mice, all living together in sleepy amity. But this will not do. The animals of that "family" were kept in such a semi-torpid state by confinement and high living--even if they were not daily dosed, as some declared, with Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup--that they had not spirit enough to exercise their natural passions. No, puss cannot be reformed; and since there are so many who cannot bring their minds to destroy their favorite cats, nor to shut them up from spring till fall, would it not be well to have cat boarding-houses opened in cities to meet this need? I could name more than one who would patronize such an institution. Our cat, old Navet--so called from her habit of bringing up turnips from the cellar and insisting upon munching them in the library--has been sent some miles away to a friend, who, having several cats already, cannot expect to have birds about the house; but if this resource failed, I should not hesitate long between even Navet and the birds.