So if the sea is far away and time hangs heavy, invite your friends to go sponging and crabbing in the nearest pond, and you may be certain of quieting their fears as to your sanity as well as drawing exclamations of delight from them when they see these beautiful creatures for the first time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DECEMBER ------------------------------------------------------------------------ NEW THOUGHTS ABOUT NESTS Our sense of smell is not so keen as that of a dog, who can detect the tiny quail while they are still invisible; nor have we the piercing sight of the eagle who spies the grouse crouching hundreds of feet beneath his circling flight; but when we walk through the bare December woods there is unfolded at last to our eyes evidence of the late presence of our summer's feathered friends--air castles and tree castles of varied patterns and delicate workmanship. Did it ever occur to you to think what the first nest was like--what home the first reptile-like scale flutterers chose? Far back before Jurassic times, millions of years ago, before the coming of bony fishes, when the only mammals were tiny nameless creatures, hardly larger than mice; when the great Altantosaurus dinosaurs browsed on the quaint herbage, and Pterodactyls--those ravenous bat-winged dragons of the air--hovered above the surface of the earth,--in this epoch we can imagine a pair of long-tailed, half-winged creatures which skimmed from tree to tree, perhaps giving an occasional flop--the beginning of the marvellous flight motions. Is it not likely that the Teleosaurs who watched hungrily from the swamps saw them disappear at last in a hollowed cavity beneath a rotten knothole? Here, perhaps, the soft-shelled, lizard-like eggs were laid, and when they gave forth the ugly creaturelings did not Father Creature flop to the topmost branch and utter a gurgling cough, a most unpleasant grating sound, but grand in its significance, as the opening chord in the symphony of the ages to follow?--until now the mockingbird and the nightingale hold us spellbound by the wonder of their minstrelsy. Turning from our imaginary picture of the ancient days, we find that some of the birds of the present time have found a primitive way of nesting still the best. If we push over this rotten stump we shall find that the cavity near the top, where the wood is still sound, has been used the past summer by the downy woodpecker--a front door like an auger hole, ceiling of rough-hewn wood, a bed of chips! The chickadee goes a step further, and shows his cleverness in sometimes choosing a cavity already made, and instead of rough, bare chips, the six or eight chickadee youngsters are happy on a hair mattress of a closely woven felt-like substance.