Degenerate in muscles and vitality, the skunk must forego all strenuous hunts and trust to craft and sudden springs, or else content himself with the humble fare of insects, helpless young birds, and poor, easily confused mice. The flesh of the skunk is said to be sweet and toothsome, but few creatures there are who dare attempt to add it to their bill of fare! A great horned owl or a puma in the extremity of starvation, or a vulture in dire stress of hunger,--probably no others. Far from wilfully provoking an attack, the skunk is usually content to go on his way peacefully, and when one of these creatures becomes accustomed to the sight of an observer, no more interesting and, indeed, safer object of study can be found. Depart once from the conventional mode of greeting a skunk,--and instead of hurling a stone in its direction and fleeing, place, if the opportunity present itself, bits of meat in its way evening after evening, and you will soon learn that there is nothing vicious in the heart of the skunk. The evening that the gentle animal appears leading in her train a file of tiny infant skunks, you will feel well repaid for the trouble you have taken. Baby skunks, like their elders, soon learn to know their friends, and are far from being at hair-trigger poise, as is generally supposed. THE LESSON OF THE WAVE The sea and the sky and the shore were at perfect peace on the day when the young gull first launched into the air, and flew outward over the green, smooth ocean. Day after day his parents had brought him fish and squid, until his baby plumage fell from him and his beautiful wing-feathers shot forth,--clean-webbed and elastic. His strong feet had carried him for days over the expanse of sand dunes and pebbles, and now and then he had paddled into deep pools and bathed in the cold salt water. Most creatures of the earth are limited to one or the other of these two elements, but now the gull was proving his mastery over a third. The land, the sea, were left below, and up into the air drifted the beautiful bird, every motion confident with the instinct of ages. The usefulness of his mother's immaculate breast now becomes apparent. A school of small fish basking near the surface rise and fall with the gentle undulating swell, seeing dimly overhead the blue sky, flecked with hosts of fleecy white clouds. A nearer, swifter cloud approaches, hesitates, splashes into their midst,--and the parent gull has caught her first fish of the day. Instinctively the young bird dives; in his joy of very life he cries aloud,--the gull-cry which his ancestors of long ago have handed down to him. At night he seeks the shore and tucks his bill into his plumage; and all because of something within him, compelling him to do these things. But far from being an automaton, his bright eye and full-rounded head presage higher things. Occasionally his mind breaks through the mist of instinct and reaches upward to higher activity.