subjected to condign punishment. But his wife, family and friends survive in different spots of the adjacent underworld, to give evidence of their existence only in subsequent havoc. The titillative rake or the peremptory hoe does not help you much in their discovery; for their color is that of the soil, their size as various as that of bits of gravel, and they are not easily perceptible to a cursory glance from the ordinary height of the eye. Here is where keener optics than yours, sharpened perhaps by a keener impulse--that of the stomach--come to the rescue. The catbird, whose imploring mew you listened to from your bed some time before thinking proper to respond to it, is intently watching operations from the other end of the border or the square. His lusty youngsters have been trained, after the good old fashion, to early hours, and they are impatient for breakfast. Their parent sees what you do not, and astonishes you by suddenly pouncing upon a bit of earth you have just broken and seizing a stout worm. This stranger, if presentable to the family circle, he is at once off with, his spouse taking his place in the field. Or the youngsters may still be _in futuro_. All the same: whatever turns up is welcome to him. His appetite seems as insatiable as that of half a dozen nestlings: they, you know, will eat three or four times their own weight in twelve hours. He is thus immensely useful to you, but your appreciation of that fact is as nothing to his estimate of your value to him. He accepts you as a being sent for his benefit. You are a part of his scheme of providence. True, he pities while he rejoices over you. Your blindness and stupidity in not seeing the fat and luscious tidbits he snaps up from almost beneath your feet is of course a subject of wonder and disdain. But he learns to make allowances for you, and comes to view your failings charitably, especially as they enure to his benefit, and so lean to Virtue's side. Fear of you he has none. Indeed, you inspire in him a certain sense of protection, for in your presence his habitual vigilance is lulled, and his apprehensive glances over his right and left shoulders fall to a lower figure per minute. He has learned there to feel safe from hawk and cat, and knows enough of other birds to be sure that none of them will "jump" his little claim of fifty feet square whereof you are the moving centre. His individual audacity gives him the sway of that small empire, and he doubts not that you will support him in acting up to the motto of the Iron Crown of the Lombards. His cousin the robin may, and very probably does, hover on the outskirts, but an exact distance measures the comparative boldness and familiarity of the two species. The catbird is, say, ten yards more companionable than his red-vested relative in the latter's most genial and trustful mood; and his faith is of a more robust type and less easily and permanently weakened by rebuffs. The robin rarely hovers round you, but likes to