A good repellant for all kinds of mosquitoes may be made as follows: Oil of citronella, one ounce; spirits of camphor, one ounce; oil of cedar, one half ounce. This may be rubbed lightly on the hands and face. A few drops on a towel hung near the head will keep mosquitoes away for hours. Burning a little fresh, dry pyrethrum powder in a closed room will drive flies and mosquitoes to the windows and stupefy them so that they will fall and then may be easily killed.

THE FLY

How large unto the tiny fly
Must little things appear:-
A rosebud like a feather bed,
Its prickle like a spear;

A dewdrop like a looking-glass,
A hair like golden wire;
The smallest grain of mustard seed
As fierce as coals of fire;

A loaf of bread, a lofty hill;
A wasp, a cruel leopard;

And specks of salt as bright to see

As lambkins to a shepherd.

WALTER RAMAL.

TO A WATER FOWL

Whither, midst falling dew,

While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler's eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.

Seek'st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,-
The desert and illimitable air,-

Lone wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fanned,

At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere;
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.

And soon that toil shall end;

Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest, And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend, Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest.

Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart
Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.

He who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

By permission, D. Appleton & Co.

-WM. CULLEN BRYANT.

O pretty bird, so fleet and small,
Why speed'st thou to the mountain side?
Say, dost thou hear thy nestlings' call
O'er all the moorland lone and wide?

Hush, birdies, hush! lie close and still,
And in your dogwood cradle swing;
Your hungry mouths shall have their fill,
For here is supper on the wing.

-AUGUSTA LARNED.

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS

As a result of scientific research, it is learned that many of our common maladies, no less than the growing burden of weed control, are traceable to our former wholesale slaughter of insectivorous birds. Most insects are at war with man and man's interests. Birds annually destroy thousands of tons of noxious weed seeds and billions of harmful insects; they seem, indeed, designed to hold in check certain forces antagonistic to both the animal and the vegetable kingdoms. The Mexican boll weevil, for instance, which has worked such fearful havoc in the cotton

fields of Texas, and which is steadily marching eastward, finds its deadliest enemy in the bird.

A noted French scientist asserts that without birds to check the ravages of insects, human life would vanish from this planet in the short space of nine years. He holds that insects would first destroy the growing cereals, and would next fall upon the grass and foliage, leaving nothing upon which cattle and other stock could subsist. Agriculture and general plant life having thus been destroyed, domestic animals would perish for lack of food, and man, in his extremity, in a barren and desolate land, would be driven to subsist on fish, later to devour his fellows, and finally to share in the general extinction.

Granting that only a portion of what this eminent Frenchman asserts is true, it is easy to glean from his theory that birds are man's best allies, and that they should be protected, not only on account of their great usefulness, but because their bright plumage and their sweet singing inspire us to a love of the pure and the beautiful.

The wholesale slaughter of our song and insectivorous birds so persistently waged in the past has been practically stopped. Even in cities, where birds lately were but curiosities, they are now seen in large numbers, to the delight of all who love Nature in her visible forms.