magnolia tree just outside our windows. A Carolina wren also spent the winter with us, and sang freely. In both spring and fall the white-throated sparrows sing while stopping over in the course of their migrations. Their delicate, plaintive, musical notes are among the most attractive of bird sounds. In the early spring we sometimes hear the fox-sparrows and tree-sparrows, and of course the twittering snow-birds. Later warblers of many kinds throng the trees around the house. Rabbits breed in the grounds, and every now and then possums wander into them. Gray squirrels are numerous, and some of them so tame that they will eat out of our hands. In spring they cut the flowers from the stately tulip trees. In the hot June days the indigo birds are especially in evidence among the singers around Washington; they do not mind the heat at all, but perch in the tops of little trees in the full glare of the sun, and chant their not very musical, but to my ears rather pleasing, song throughout the long afternoons. This June two new guests came to the White House in the shape of two little saw-whet owls; little bits of fellows, with round heads, and no head tufts, or “ears.” I think they were the young of the year; they never uttered the saw-whet sound, but made soft snoring noises. They always appeared after nightfall, when we were sitting on the south porch, in the warm, starlit darkness. They were fearless and unsuspicious. Sometimes they flew noiselessly to and fro, and seemingly caught big insects on the wing. At other times they would perch on the iron awning-bars, directly overhead. Once one of them perched over one of the windows, and sat motionless, looking exactly like an owl of Pallas Athene. [Illustration: PETER RABBIT From a photograph, copyright, 1904, by E. S. Curtis ]