feathers streaming in the wind. You make notes of all that you have seen, and when you get home amuse yourself by searching in books for an explanation of those subjects which have excited your curiosity. [Illustration: Fig. 18. _Nidulària campanulàta._] First, if you will look for the article Mole in Bell's _British Quadrupeds_, you will find an engraving of the curious little hands, or rather paws, by which the mole makes its passages through the earth, with a plan of its castle under ground; and you will read a description of the little animal itself, and of its fur which is set horizontally from its skin, so as not to offer any obstruction in the narrow passages through which it moves, sometimes forward and sometimes backward. You will also read an account of the ingenious experiment of M. Henri Le Court, who, to discover how fast a mole could go, fixed straws in the track of the mole's burrow; and then, blowing a horn at the entrance, counted with what rapidity the different straws were thrown down, and calculated that a mole can run as fast as a horse can trot. The whole account is extremely curious; and I am quite sure, when you have read it, you will feel an interest in moles that you have never had before; and that you will look with quite different feelings at every mole-hill that you may see. The next thing you saw was a bird hanging a field-mouse upon the fork of a branch, and near it you saw several insects impaled upon twigs, too high for it to have been the work of a mischievous boy. The bird you saw was the Greater Shrike, or butcher bird, whose habit it is to hang up the insects or small animals it kills as a butcher does the meat in his stall, and afterwards to return to feed upon them. You will find accounts of this curious bird in Yarrell's _British Birds_; Montagu's _Ornithological Dictionary_; and the _Penny Cyclopædia_, under the article Shrike.