The boys exhibited an array of several dozen birds, and related, during breakfast, the various incidents of failure and success which had attended their guns. Ernest had rightfully guessed the mistakes they would make, but practice was making them perfect, and they seemed disposed to continue their sport, when their mother, assuring them that she could not use more birds than those already killed, asked if I did not think some means of snaring them might be contrived, as much powder and shot would be expended if they fired on at this rate. Entirely agreeing with this view of the subject, I desired the lads to lay aside their guns for the present, and the younger ones readily applied themselves to making snares of the long threads drawn from the leaves of the karatas, in a simple way I taught them, while Fritz and Ernest gave me substantial assistance in the manufacture of the new sledge. We were busily at work, when a tremendous disturbance among our fowls led us to suppose that a fox or wild cat had got into their midst. The cocks crowed defiantly, the hens fluttered and cackled in a state of the wildest excitement. We hastened toward them, but Ernest remarking Master Knips slipping away, as though conscious of some misdemeanor, went to watch him, and presently caught him in the act of eating a new-laid egg, which he had carried off and hidden among the grass and roots. Ernest found several others. These were very welcome to my wife, for hitherto the hens had not presented us with any eggs. Hereafter she determined to imprison the monkey every morning until the eggs had been collected. Soon after this, as Jack was setting the newly made snares among the branches, he discovered that a pair of our own pigeons were building in the tree. It was very desirable to increase our stock of these pretty birds, and I cautioned the boys against shooting near our tree while they had nests there, and also with regard to the snares, which were meant only to entrap the wild fig-eaters. Although my sons were interested in setting the snares, they by no means approved of the new order to economize the ammunition. No doubt they had been discussing this hardship, for little Franz came to me with a brilliant proposal of his own. "Papa," said he, "why should not we begin to plant some powder and shot immediately? It would be so much more useful than bare grain for the fowls." His brothers burst into a roar of laughter, and I must confess I found it no easy matter to keep my countenance. "Come, Ernest," said I; "now we have had our amusement, tell the little fellow what gunpowder really is." "It is not seed at all, Franz," Ernest explained. "Gunpowder is made of charcoal, sulphur, and saltpeter, mixed cleverly together; so you see it cannot be sown like corn, any more than shot can be planted like peas and beans."