the old "valentines") without being misaccented; but we ornithologists could forgive the halting rhyme and barbarous accent for the sake of the correctness of the "colouring" otherwise. The truth is that our best wild-bird music time may be set down as properly belonging to the eight weeks between the 15th March and the 15th May. Let our poets, then, look out for and find appropriate rhymes for "March," "April," and "May." It is their business and not ours; but for any sake, in dealing with wild-bird music and summer joys, let them beware of the fatal facility of the rhymes of "June" and "tune." Poets and poetry apart, however, it was extremely interesting to watch the conduct of our wild-birds during our late "Indian summer." For the first few days they fluttered about and chirped interrogatively amongst themselves, as if in a state of doubt and indecision, if not of actual bewilderment, evidently puzzled what to say to it, but, upon the whole, of opinion that it was too good to last. Last, however, it did, longer than either they or we thought at all likely, and before the end of the week the chirping had developed into actual song, and the fluttering into a business-like activity, as if they had fully thought it over, and had decided that it was best, proverb wise, to be making some hay while the sun shone. Our attention was first of all attracted by a pair of house sparrows passing and repassing our study window, now with a stray feather, now with a bit of straw in their bills, with which they disappeared in a clump of ivy high up on a corner of the garden wall. On climbing by the aid of a small ladder to inquire what they were about, we found that they were repairing a nest, in which they had already reared a brood this season, and which the youngsters, in their unfledged and awkward babyhood, had considerably damaged and generally knocked out of shape--"into a cocked hat," in fact, as they say across the Atlantic. With a care and painstaking, however, which our "featherless biped" architects, in executing their repairs on our stone and lime habitations would do well to imitate, the sparrows in a surprisingly short time got their house in order, and in a few days thereafter we found a couple of eggs in it. These eggs we took away, for it would only be cruel to allow a brood to be hatched at this season, only to starve and die before they could possibly be strong enough of wing to shift for themselves. And here, in connection with these same sparrow eggs, let us record a fact that seems to have hitherto escaped the notice of our oologists (egg-students), even the most lynx-eyed and observant of them, and it is this: that in the case of such of our wild-birds as breed more than once in a single season, the eggs of the second laying, and of the third, if third laying there is--of all eggs, in short, dropped after the first laying--are, as a rule, either entirely free from spots, or, if they have the spots, they are so faint as to