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quirk an artful evasion, a sudden turn.

wile — a trick practiced for deception, allurement.

mot'ley - the costume of variegated colors worn by the court

Notes and Questions. Why is the flicker called a pioneer? What is meant by "lispings infantile"? How did the flicker show his fondness for his mate? What is said of "his chucklings "? Why are the trees sober and serious"? What is meant by proper birds to scandalize"? How did the flicker try to make other birds happy? What does "Nature's motley" mean? What is meant by the "feast Nature spreads for all"? When does the author hie forth to sup with her? Explain the meaning of "drunk with new wine of the year." Describe the coloring of the yellow hammer.

I've plucked the berry from the bush, the brown nut from

the tree,

But heart of happy little bird ne'er broken was by me.

I passed them by, and blessed them all; I felt that it was good

To leave unmoved the creatures small whose home was

in the wood.

WILLIAM MOTHERWELL.

MY LADY'S PLUMES

You observed the hat of the lady who walked in front of you down the fashionable part of the main street the other day. . . . You have not noticed, perhaps, that on my lady's hat are some tall, pliant plumes, long as those of the ostrich, but far more beautiful, with delicate filaments as light as frost-work on a winter window. .

These long, filmy plumes on my lady's hat are the plumes of the white egret. Naturally they are pure

EGRET PLUMES

white, . . . but pure white not being barbaric enough for the use of civilization - though it used to serve Southern Indians who wore these plumes - they are dyed any color of the rainbow, losing thereby none of their gracefulness and only some of their beauty.

My lady's hat, if worn too long, will lose its purpose and cease to attract. She must therefore change it. The plumes in the new hat must be of different color. For these new plumes she looks to her milliner. The milliner looks to the great wholesale supply house of the metropolis. The wholesale supply house looks- and with much anxiety these days - to Thomas Jones, market shooter, or technically speaking, plumage hunter.

Thomas Jones knows where there is an egret roost, or as he will call it, a "white crane roost." Really, he does not mean a roost so much as a nesting ground, where thousands of birds nest in a small tract of the isolated wet forest or "dead-tree swamp.' Such rookeries were once common in Florida, but are so no longer. Thomas Jones may know of one in Mississippi, Louisiana, or Texas, and holds himself fortunate if he does, for they are scarce enough to-day. .

Mind you, the plumage hunter does not go into the roost until spring has well advanced. When he reaches the roost the low trees, bushes, and grassy brush clumps are full of nests, and the nests are or soon will be full of young birds. The busy life of the colony goes on. The parents come and go, traveling no one knows how far to get food for the gaping young birds in the nest. Thomas Jones notes the high, projecting snag of the tallest tree near the edge of the colony. There is a white crane on that limb. It seems to him there always is one there. In short, it is a habit of the bird to alight on the highest branch offering itself.

Out of the thousands of nests in the vast colony, how can the parent egret pick its own nest, since all look so much alike? Thomas Jones often wonders about that, and sometimes laughs a little to himself. The parent egret has been out after food, and returns to the colony. Without a second's hesitation he picks out his own nest, and pauses for an instant directly above it, high up in the air. Then he let his long legs drop straight down and, throwing his wings up, just falls down through the air, feet first, in the most comical and awkward-looking

way in the world, though he never misses his nest by an inch, but lands just where he wanted to. As he thus backs downstairs out of the air, his long plumes, attached in a little clump at his shoulders and spreading out over his back as far down as the longest tail feathers, flare up in the air, reversed and standing up over his head as he drops, as a white garment would in the resistance of the air.

On these plumes Thomas Jones fixes his eye. He shoots an egret and satisfies himself that the plumes are “ripe,” i.e., in their prime condition. Then he builds his camp on the best ground he can find near by, and the next day is ready to go to work.

Surely Thomas Jones is not going to kill these birds right in the nesting season, when the helpless young are in the nest and must die also if their parents die! That cannot be possible! you say. Yet that is precisely what he is going to do. It is not his fault, he will tell you, that the plumes are not good in the fall, winter, or early spring, and are not prime until the height of the breeding season. Here are the plumes, found at much labor, reached at much danger, says Thomas Jones, blind and deaf- further than that, and there is the price offered me for them, so much an ounce, perhaps $40 an ounce, or perhaps as low as $140 a pound. Is this right to kill these birds at this time? I am not clear that we should ask this question any more of Thomas Jones than of the wholesale milliners' supply house, or of the retail milliner, or of every lady on the street. Only the fact remains, pitiless, horrible, unspeakable, that the gathering of the plumes is a harvest of death, a harvest