I once heard of a green-colored South American parrot who was more than one hundred years old. This aged fellow could speak in a real language which was known to have been used by a tribe of South American Indians who, it is supposed, petted and taught him when he was young. One by one the Indians died, until there was no one left who could understand a word of their language. The poor old bird tried hard to keep cheerful, but there were sorry times when he would mope by himself and say over some of the words of the language that had been spoken by his earliest and dearest human friends. That was a very dead language, indeed, my dears; so dead that it is no wonder it made the old green parrot blue to speak it now and then. However, by this time it is past all power to worry anybody else, let us hope. A PLANT THAT WALKS UPSIDE DOWN. Shrubs, trees, Jack-in-the-Pulpits, and all such plants, grow with their roots down in the ground; but I've lately heard that a man called a philosopher, once wrote of a plant that grows and walks with the roots upward! Lord Francis Bacon is the man's name, and the plant he meant is Man. Only he wrote in Latin, I believe, and so, instead of calling Man "a plant upside down," he called him "planta inversa." He explained these words by saying that the brain in man, whence the nerves start, to spread like a net-work all through the body, corresponds to the roots in a plant. If this is so, my dears, you are a kind of walking plants, only you are obliged to walk top-side down. This seems curious, but it is pleasant to think you are not so very different from a Jack-in-the-Pulpit after all. THE SMALLEST INSECT KNOWN. The Red Schoolhouse. MY DEAR JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT: No doubt, you have heard of the "leaf-cutter" bees, who line their nests with small round pieces of leaves, which they themselves cut and then fit together so exactly, without gum, that they hold their stores of honey and do not leak a bit. Well, a sharp-eyed observer has found, on one of these bees, an insect whose body is no longer than the width of the dot of this "i" (1-90th of an inch), and which is believed to be the smallest insect known. It is called _Pteratomus_, a word which means "winged atom," and it lives entirely upon the body of the bee. It has beautiful hairy wings, and long feelers, and its legs are rather like those of a mosquito, though, of course, very much smaller. Its feet are so small that they can only just be seen when magnified to four hundred times their natural size! Now, for a full-grown insect, as it is, I think the _Pteratomus_ is very small.--Sincerely yours, THE LITTLE SCHOOLMA'AM. [Illustration: A WATER-SPOUT.] A WATER-SPOUT.