How do the insects pass the winter? Much in the same way that our plants and flowers do. As the cold weather kills or withers the plants, leaving their seeds and roots to send forth shoots next summer, so most of the insects die, leaving their eggs, their larvæ, and their pupa to be nourished into life by the warm days of spring. [Illustration: ENGLISH SPARROW.] Notes January Sixteenth Insects are more dependent on climatic conditions than are birds or mammals. Nevertheless, even on the coldest days of winter, one may tear away the bark of a forest tree and find spiders which show signs of life, and if kept in a warm room for a few hours, they become quite active. January Seventeenth The life of an insect which undergoes what is termed a "complete transformation," is divided into four stages: First, the egg; second, the larva; third, the pupa or chrysalis, and fourth, the adult insect or imago. Each of these changes is so complete and different from any of the others, that the insect never appears twice in an easily recognized form. January Eighteenth Let us take the common house-fly for an example, and follow it through the changes that it must undergo before becoming adult. The mother fly deposits more than a hundred eggs at a time, in a dump at the back of the stable. The eggs hatch in half a day. Notes January Nineteenth Now we have the larvæ (maggots), as the second stage is called. These little creatures are white and grow very fast, shedding their skin several times before they take on a different form, which they do at the end of three or four days. January Twentieth The third, or pupa, stage is reached when a tiny brown capsule-like formation has taken the place of the maggot. In this stage no movement is apparent, nor is any food taken; there is only a quiet waiting for the final change, which comes in about five days, when, out from one end of a chrysalis, a fully developed fly appears. January Twenty-first The wonderful changes just described take place throughout most of the insect world. The larvæ of butterflies and moths are caterpillars; the larvæ of June bugs or May beetles are grubs. Some moth and butterfly caterpillars weave silken cocoons about themselves; some make cocoons from leaves or tiny chips of wood; some utilize the hair from their own bodies, while others attach themselves to the under side of boards, stones, and stumps, where, after shedding their skin, they hang like mummies until spring calls them back to life. Notes January Twenty-second Bird lovers often make the mistake of putting out nesting-boxes too late in the season. They forget that most of the birds begin to look for nesting-sites as soon as they arrive in the spring, therefore the boxes should be in place before the prospective tenants appear. March first is none too early for many localities. January Twenty-third