We want to know what you think of The Mentor, and we want you to tell us how we can be of benefit to you as a member of the Association. Our service is not complete in simply sending you The Mentor and the pictures week by week. We can bring you in touch with our Advisory Board, so that you may have the best advice in matters of side reading, and intelligent direction as to the organization and conducting of reading clubs; also expert information concerning books and pictures that bear on the topics in The Mentor. In the day’s mail we find one inquiry from a member of a reading club who wants to know what side reading she should take up to prepare for an evening on “American Landscape Painters.” The copy of The Mentor treating that subject is to be the core and center of the evening’s reading. The writers of authority associated with us enable us to give our correspondent the benefit of the best advice. * * * * * Another writer asks for a selection of pictures suitable for wall decoration in the schoolroom, leaving it to us to suggest appropriate subjects. This is the sort of inquiry that we delight in, and we can help of course, for we have a great store of good art material, to which we are adding each week and from which a wide variety of subjects can be selected. [Illustration: RUFFED GROUSE COPYRIGHTED BY LOUIS AGASSIZ FUERTES, 1906] _GAME BIRDS OF AMERICA_ _Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbella)_ ONE The drumming of a ruffed grouse is like the sound of a rattlesnake: only those who have heard it know what it is like. It seems to come from any part of the thicket or woods, like the voice of a ventriloquist. Sometimes it resembles distant thunder or the rumble of wheels. Early in spring the male steps cautiously out on a log, first making sure that no fox or weasel is hiding near. His rich chestnut hue, with purple or bronze on the ruffs, and white-barred tail, harmonizes beautifully with the shadows of the surrounding spruce thicket. Then he rises on tiptoe, and with wings held out a little way from the body begins his thump, thump, thump--faster and faster until it dies away in a mere rumbling. Hunters at one time supposed that this sound was made by the wings striking against the log or stump; but it is now known to be produced by rapid vibration of the quill feathers. Usually there are hen grouse nearby who sneak up through the leaves to watch his performance. He takes them all if he can find them, for the grouse cock prefers a harem; and they go about in a flock together. Day after day the drummer returns to his favorite log, until the warm weather comes on. Sportsmen often speak of shooting pheasants, when in reality they mean grouse; for there are no native pheasants in the United States, the nearest approach being, strangely enough, our wild turkey. Often the ruffed grouse is spoken of as a partridge--and where that is so Bob White is called a quail.