Throughout his polished pages no thought shocks by its extravagance, no word offends by vulgarity or affectation.-Edinburgh Review.

A Rainy Sunday in an Inn.

It was a rainy Sunday in the gloomy month of November. I had been detained in the course of a journey by a slight indisposition, from which I was recovering; but I was still feverish, and was obliged to keep within doors all day, in an inn of the small town of Derby. A wet Sunday in a country inn; whoever has had the luck to experience one, can alone judge of my situation. The rain pattered against the casements, the bells tolled for church with a melancholy sound. I went to the windows in quest of something to amuse the eye, but it seemed as if I had been placed completely out of the reach of all amusement. The windows of my bed-room looked out among tiled roofs and stacks of chimneys, while those of my sittingroom commanded a full view of the stable-yard. I know of nothing more calculated to make a man sick of this world than a stable-yard on a rainy day. The place was littered with wet straw that had been kicked about by travelers and stable-boys. In one corner was a stagnant pool of water surrounding an island of muck; there were several half-drowned fowls crowded together under a cart, among which was a miserable crestfallen cock, drenched out of all life and spirit, his drooping tail matted, as it were, into a single feather, along which the water trickled from his back; near the cart was a half-dozing cow, chewing the cud, and standing patiently to be rained on, with wreaths of vapor rising from her reeking hide; a wall-eyed horse, tired of the loneliness of the stable, was poking his spectral head out of a window, with the rain dripping on it from the eaves; an unhappy cur, chained to a dog-house hard by, uttered something every now and then between a bark and a yelp; a drab of a kitchen wench tramped backward and forward through the yards in pattens, looking as sulky as the weather itself; everything, in short, was comfortless and forlorn, excepting a crew of hard-drinking ducks, assembled like boon companions round a puddle, and making a riotous noise over their liquor.

I sauntered to the window, and stood gazing at the people picking their way to church, with petticoats hoisted mid-leg high, and dripping umbrellas. The bells ceased to toll, and the streets became silent. I then amused myself with watching the daughters of a tradesman opposite, who, being confined to the house for fear of wetting their Sunday finery, played off

their charms at the front windows, to fascinate the chance tenants of the inn. They at length were summoned away by a vigilant vinegar-faced mother, and I had nothing further with

out to amuse me.

The day continued lowering and gloomy; the slovenly, ragged, spongy clouds drifted heavily along; there was no variety even in the rain; it was one dull, continued, monotonous patter, patter, patter, excepting that now and then I was enlivened by the idea of a brisk shower, from the rattling of the drops upon a passing umbrella. It was quite refreshing (if I may be allowed a hackneyed phrase of the day) when in the course of the morning a horn blew, and a stage-coach whirled through the street with outside passengers stuck all over it, cowering under cotton umbrellas, and seethed together, and reeking with the steams of wet box-coats and upper benjamins. The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler, and that nondescript animal yclept Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient: the coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain

on.

The evening gradually wore away. The travelers read the papers two or three times over. Some drew round the fire and told long stories about their horses, about their adventures,

their overturns and breakings-down. They discussed the credits of different merchants and different inns, and the two wags told several choice anecdotes of pretty chambermaids and kind landladies. All this passed as they were quietly taking what they called their nightcaps; that is to say, strong glasses of brandy and water or sugar, or some other mixture of the kind; after which they one after another rang for Boots and the chambermaid, and walked off to bed in old shoes cut down into marvelously uncomfortable slippers. There was only one man left,—a short-legged, long-bodied plethoric fellow, with a very large sandy head. He sat by himself with a glass of port wine negus and a spoon, sipping and stirring, and meditating and sipping, until nothing was left but the spoon. He gradually fell asleep bolt upright in his chair, with the empty glass standing before him; and the candle seemed to fall asleep too, for the wick grew long and black, and cabbaged at the end, and dimmed the little light that remained in the chamber. The gloom that now prevailed was contagious. Around hung the shapeless and almost spectral box-coats of departed travelers, long since buried in deep sleep. I only heard the ticking of the clock, with the deep-drawn breathings of the sleeping toper, and the drippings of the rain-drop, drop, drop-from the eaves of the house.

Irving's Last Interview with Scott.

It was at Sunnyside, on a glorious afternoon in June, 1855, that surrounded by scenery which Irving has best described, he narrated to me (S. Austin Allibone) the following account of his last interview with Scott:

"I was in London when Scott arrived after his attack of paralysis, on his way to the continent in search of health. I received a note from Lockhart, begging me to come and take dinner with Scott and himself the next day. When I entered the room Scott grasped my hand, and looked me steadfastly in the face. 'Time has dealt gently with you, my friend, since we parted,' he exclaimed:--he referred to the difference in himself since we had met. At dinner, I could see that Scott's mind was failing. He was painfully conscious of it himself. He would talk with much animation, and we would listen with the most respectful attention; but there was an effort and an embarrassment in his manner; he knew all was not right. It was tried to keep up the conversation between ourselves, that Sir very distressing, and we (Irving, Lockhart, and Anne Scott) Walter might talk as little as possible.

After dinner he took

my arm to walk up-stairs, which he did with difficulty. He turned and looked in my face, and said, 'They need not tell a man his mind is not affected when his body is as much impaired as mine. This was my last interview with Scott. I heard afterward that he was better; but I never saw him again."

told me that as Scott passed up the stairs with him after dinTwo years later (in 1857), in narrating the same event, Irving ner, he remarked, "Times are sadly changed since we walked up the Eildon hills together."

JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

There is no better literary manner than the manner of Mr. Paulding. Certainly no American, and possibly no living writer of England has more of those numerous peculiarities which go to the formation of a happy style.-Edgar A. Poe.

His works are exclusively and eminently natural, and his descriptions of natural scenery are often eminently beautiful.-London Athenæum. TIME A DESTROYER.-I saw a temple, reared by the hands of man, standing with its high pinnacle in the distant plain. The streams beat about it; the God of nature hurled his thunderbolts against it; yet it stood firm as adamant. Revelry was in the halls; the gay, the young, the beautiful were there. I returned, and lo! the temple was no more. Its high walls lay scattered in ruin; moss and grass grew rankly there; and, at the midnight hour, the owl's long cry added to the solitude.

The young, the gay, who had reveled there, had passed away. I saw a child rejoicing in his youth, the idol of his mother, and the pride of his father. I returned and the child had become old. Trembling with the weight of years, he stood the last of his generation, a stranger amidst all the desolation around him. I saw an old oak standing in all its pride upon the mountain; the birds were caroling in its boughs. I returned and saw the oak was leafless and sapless; the winds were playing at their pastime through the branches. "Who is the destroyer?" said I to my guardian angel. "It is Time," said he. When the morning stars sang together for joy over the new-made world, he commenced his course, and when he has destroyed all that is beautiful on the earth, plucked the sun from his sphere, veiled the moon in blood; yea, when he shall have rolled the heavens and the earth away as a scroll, then shall an angel from the throne of God come forth, and, with one foot upon the land, lift up his hand toward heaven, and swear by heaven's eternal, "time was, but time shall be no more." [End of Required Reading for December.]

RETURNING.

By MARY HARRISON.

"The spirit shall return to the God who gave it." White clouds upon heaven's bosom rest, Begotten of the sunshine's love, Now nestled like a fondled dove Upon a woman's loving breast.

Heaven feeds her baby clouds, they grow, Then leave her for their manhood's life; And wail and scramble in the strife Through which all earth-born children go.

They sink and wander in the gloom
Of winding subterranean ways,
And learn the loss of heavenlier days,
By groping through their chosen tomb.

At length, lights gleam along the distant way,
With eager thoughts of childhood, blest,
And hopes of entering into rest,
They leap to airy, sunny day.

Now rivers slave them to the fields

To fill the cattle-troughs with drink, And dress the rose-boughs on their brink, And feed the grass the meadow yields.

For friends and good, they look behind,
Then curse the past, and pray to be
Unborn again within the sea,
For birth has been to them unkind.

All scenes have gone! no good has come! From bank to bank the waters heave With tides which only mock and grieve, Despairs of long-lost, hopeless home.

And looking but for lulling sleep,

The last deep solace of the grave, They leap to meet the leaping wave, And find their lost home in the deep.

So through his day, blind man has striven,
As vapor-clouds, he came to be,
Drawn from, then wandering to the sea,
Invisible, with God in heaven.

The records in the Department of Education, in Washington City, show that in the recent slave States of the Union the total school population was, in 1881, 5,814,261. Of these, 3,973,676 were white; 1,840,585 colored children. Counting both races the total school enrollment for 1881 was 3,034,896; of these 2,232,337 were white, 802,559 colored children. Nearly half the white, and more than half the colored school population was, in 1881, out of school. In some of these States the school term is from three to five months; in the cotton States not more than three. Perhaps five months each year is as long a school term as the conditions and needs of the laboring classes in these States will allow.

In 1881 these States expended upon their public schools $13,359,784; except perhaps in one state this money was expended without distinction of race. The races have schools of their own; doctrinaires would mix them by force of law; those who are actually doing the work of education in these States know that this can not be done, and that only harm would come of it, if the experiment were attempted. For neither race would do so well if taught together; the colored children do not desire mixed schools, and the white children will not attend them. In such conditions law is helpless, and force is folly; also ruin.

OTHER FACTS.

The official figures give the numbers; parole evidence is necessary to complete the statement of the case. In 1881 there were, as the Department of Education reports, in the Southern States 17,248 common schools for colored children. With exceptions so few that they are inappreciable in these statements, the teachers in these 17,248 common schools were colored-the large majority being women. The majority of these teachers are pitiably incompetent; some of them are well furnished for their work, and are doing it faithfully and successfully. Nearly all of these colored teachers who are of any use have received their preparation in the various schools for higher instruction established by societies and churches in the Northern States. Some of the best work is done in schools established and carried on by individual devotion-I will not say enterprise. Taking them all together there are nearly one hundred and fifty of these schools, called, as fancy or circumstances prompted or allowed, universities, colleges, institutes, seminaries, normal schools, etc., etc. There is hardly an "academy" among them.

OVER-NAMING.

Many will think me wrong in the opinion I now offer; some of the wisest of the teachers in the real work of teaching negroes will agree with me: it is a misfortune that the names given these schools are so out of proportion to their real work and character. None of them, even in catalogues, go beyond the ordinary college course; many of them do not come up to it; in none of them do more than a very small number complete this course. There is not a university, in any proper sense, among them all. It is not in the spirit of censure that I speak of these things, but of deep interest in the great and necessary work, that the good people engaged in these schools are trying, with rare consecration and in the teeth of a thousand discouragements, to accomplish.

First, then, the large names have excited prejudice among the white people who did not know what was back of the names. Most of them, for a long time, did not know what the universities and colleges were really trying to do; the majority do not know at this time..

Some of those who did know something thought the whole business a mere sham; for a long time only a few southern white people really knew that faithful, wise and successful teaching was done in these colleges and universities-most of it not being college or university work at all. The few who really knew what good work was being done could over-look the ambitious names-it being a weakness in the South and West, yielded to by not a few, to give great names to small schools for white youth. The wiser and kinder-hearted ones could condone the offense of over-large names in view of their own example.

The big names did as much as anything else to anger the poor whites against all negro education. People who know human nature will understand this statement without explanation: those who do not know human nature will not understand it anyway.

The worst evil, in the long run, of this big naming of schools for the negroes, fell upon the negroes themselves. It aggravated the tendency-very strong among them—to be satisfied with the name of a thing in the lack of the thing itself, and, what is more, not knowing that they can lack the thing when they have the name. Take, for example, University," an admirable school well known to me. Its annual enrollment will average three hundred; its catalogue course reaches from the primary studies through an ordinary college curriculum; one in ten attempts this college course; one in fifty may complete it. The whole three hundred tell their friends: "I was educated in University." It gives them importance. They pass as scholars beyond their merits among their own people. In many of them it breeds injurious conceits-of a sort that makes enemies of those who might be friends, and prejudices with the uninformed-who in all countries are the majority-the whole subject of negro education. It is to be feared that only a few colored students know the difference between " University." and a real university.

NO SHAM IN THE WORK DONE.

Let me say with emphasis at this point: there is no sham in the work done in these schools. It is genuine, honest, useful work. This is a general statement; there may be, doubtless are, some schools that do not deserve this praise. But the point I wish to make plain to the readers of THE CHAUTAUQUAN is this: if there be sham it is not in the work done, but in the name given the place where it is done. I asked one of the veterans: “Why did you call this school a university?" He answered: "We hoped it would grow to it some day." How could I blame the hopefulness of those who did the naming? So many of our white schools had been named under the same sort of prophetic impulse.

TRAINING SCHOOLS.

The great and crying need in the work of education among the people is better teachers in their common schools. They can not be prepared in a day or a year; for it takes much money and much time. The training schools are without endowments, and their patrons are unable to pay more than the lowest tuition fees. If these schools-call them universities, colleges, institutes, seminaries-what you will, are to keep going at their present rate, to say nothing of improvement, white people must furnish the money, for the best of reasons; the negroes have not money to do this sort of work. Most of this money will have to come from Northern pockets, if it comes at all. The State of New York is worth more in property returned for taxation than all the Southern States together-leaving out Missouri, counted in the census of 1880 among "Western States."

THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND

Begins to do its blessed work. This fund is dedicated to the work of "Uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education," and it seeks to accomplish this result by "the training of teachers among the people requiring to be taught." This fund works through existing institutions; it does not found new schools; there are already more good and deserving schools than it can help. Many times the sum this fund affords could be wisely used.

There is not space in this article to discuss the question, but my opinion may be stated: It is necessary that the United States government should aid the States to make their public schools more efficient. Whatever may be true of other sections, the Southern States, owing to the facts of their history and to conditions now existing, are not able to do the work that is upon them.

As to the sentiment in these States on the subject of negro education, it may be said in brief: The outcry of small village papers does not always even reflect the sentiment of the people, and there are certain facts that indicate that the work of educating the negroes will go on with less and less hindrance. Three such facts I mention in closing this article: (1) The duty and necessity of educating the negro has been recognized by every representative church in the South. (2) This necessity is recognized in the educational system of every Southern State. (3) No man who believes he has any political or educational “future," any longer opposes, under his proper name, the education of his negro fellow citizens.

DRESS changes, but we are not to suppose on that account that the make of the body changes also. Politeness or rudeness, knowledge, or ignorance, more or less of a certain degree of guilelessness and simplicity, a serious or playful humor; these are but the outer crust of a man, and may all change; but the heart changes not, and the whole of man is in the heart. One age is ignorant, but the fashion of being learned may come; we are all moved by self-interest, but the fashion of being disinterested will never come. Amidst the countless myriads of creatures born in the space of a hundred years,

nature may perhaps produce two or three dozen of rational beings whom she must scatter over the world, and you can readily imagine that they are never found any where in such large numbers as to set the fashion of virtue and uprightness.

MAN OF LEARNING, TELL ME

SOMETHING.

By MARGARET MEREDITH.

Don't you, Mr. Dry-as-dust, want to turn over a new leat? My opportunities of learning are limited, perhaps, while yours are constant. If I am to spend an hour, or two or three, with you, will not you give me some advantage from your well-furnished store-house? If I do not respond then possibly you

We have a feeling that learned young men are the dullest of talkers; not because they talk weightily; Oh, no! because they talk so lightly, and lightness is not their forte.

A diligent student, a very cormorant, perhaps, of knowledge, dons a white necktie and sallies forth, and resolutely leaves behind for the evening every material he has wherewith to make himself agreeable. He is not witty, he is too busy to be a gosip, he is too little in company to learn an easy jog of commonplace or compliment. So he sits on a sofa, and the girl makes some opening remark, to which he replies with studied interest; and at the pause she magnetically feels that it is best to make a longer remark this time. If she were talking to a lad, she might drift into expressing some of her real ideas, and find profit and pleasure in airing them; but for the amusement of this young savant, by no means. Still, at his next turn to speak, or the next, she has come suggestively near some subject worth talking of; if he were with a man he would instantly plunge in, and in five minutes they would be deep in discussion or description, sharpening their wits by every sentence, fixing what they have read, shaping their crude opinions, thoroughly enjoying each other; and for this they need not be equals in cultivation, nor altogether equals in mind.

Why should it be so different when talking with a woman? There is no reason, but habit. One says, "People dislike to talk shop; the busy scholar wants a rest." On the contrary, most people, I think, would rather talk shop than anything else. If it is their life interest and their strong point, they have so much more to say. The truth is, they fear that the listener will object, and so "in company" they avoid it. I wager the listener would be delighted.

I do not write so much to those who can get up at will a brilliant flow of mere scintillation. That is a scarce enough article to be valuable. Yet they might use it occasionally on sense as well as on nonsense, and make themselves all the more notably entertaining.

་་

I once knew a grave professional man who was said to be both clever and cultivated, but for me there seemed no possible way to enjoy him. His visits were the most empty occasions. He was a desirable person to be visited by," but he was unendurable; though he did not fail to be politely attentive in more ways than one. I was glad he was going away. Just then a mutual friend came on the scene, who had views on this matter. I know she gave him the benefit of them, as well as if she had told me; for such an amazing change I never saw. The passive sitter waked up, the bore became a charming talker, and all because he had taken his own permission to be agreeable in his natural way. I was so sorry when he left town!

That instance of transformation is what inspires my appeal. The thing would seem grounded and settled, incapable of cure, but what one exhortation can accomplish has been proved.

And it is a case in which the butterfly may well spring fullcolored from the chrysalis, for the stuff that talk is made of is all there; not repartee, of course, or always brilliant expression for one's thoughts and facts; but thoughts and facts very simply used make an evening world-wide different from a succession of laboriously-framed sentences carefully intended to be about something in which the man does not take any interest, and the woman sees he does not. Can we wonder that the sand-man has to be struggled with many a time by both parties? Young boys do not blink with sleep under your very eyes; but fullgrown men often do, and largely because they insist on pursuing at thirty-five about the same topics of conversation that they used at eighteen.

over my head.

But give me one fair trial, and see if we are not “better company" and better friends ever afterward.

HIBERNATION.

By the REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A.

The hedgehog, like the bat, is carnivorous. Toward the end of autumn it looks out for some retired spot, a perfectly dry cavity in the ground or in the rock being the favorite resort. Here it gathers together a large quantity of dry moss, leaves, grass, etc., covers itself with them, rolls itself into a ball, and sinks into the hibernating lethargy.

It is rather remarkable that a hibernating animal is much more sensitive to a slight touch than to general handling. If, for example, a single hair of a hibernating bat or a single quill of a hibernating hedgehog be raised, the creature gives a quick start, and takes a few breaths before relapsing into lethargy. Yet a bat may be sunk under water, or have a thermometer tube passed into its stomach, without being awakened.

When a hibernating bat is sunk under water of the same temperature as that of its body, it does not even attempt to breathe. A similar experiment was tried with a hedgehog, and after it had been under water for twenty-one minutes, one tiny bubble of air rose to the surface. I need scarcely say that if the animal had been awake, it would have been drowned in less than a fourth of the time.

For the bat, no food can be found until the warm weather returns, and so the hibernation is unbroken for at least five months. But, though food be almost entirely withdrawn from the hedgehog, some nutriment remains, and therefore the animal is so constituted that it can discover and consume the food which has been provided for it.

This food chiefly consists of snails, which are themselves hibernators, and which during the winter months conceal themselves so effectually that they are seldom detected except by their two great wintry foes, the thrush and the hedgehog.

The hedgehog, not possessing so wide a range of hibernating temperature as the bat, which actually "hibernates" daily for a short time even during the hottest summers, is roused by an hour or two of warm sunshine such as we often experience about February. Awakened by the warmth, the hedgehog unrolls itself, creeps out of its refuge, and trundles (I know no better word to describe its peculiar pace) away in search of food. Taught by instinct, it is sure to come upon one of the strongholds of the snail, eats as many as it needs, returns to its home, and sleeps until awakened in a similar manner.

Then we have the vegetable-eating squirrel, which is a partial hibernator.

During the later weeks of autumn, the squirrel may be seen in the act of making provision for the winter. In the first place it collects a vast store of fallen leaves, moss, twigs, and similar materials, and with them constructs its winter nest.

Squirrels have two distinct kinds of nest, one for the winter and the other for the summer. Both nests are of considerable size, and both are so well concealed that to detect them is a very difficult task. The summer nest is comparatively light in texture, and is placed near the ends of lofty boughs, where it is hidden by the leaves. Moreover, its position renders it almost unassailable, as the branch on which it is built would not even endure the weight of a small boy. In the winter, when the leaves are off the trees, the nests are very conspicuous, and in

the New Forest, where I gave some time to watching the habits of the squirrel, they are exceedingly numerous.

In fact, the squirrels of the New Forest swarm in such numbers, and do so much damage to the young twigs of the trees, that many hundreds must be shot annually, just as is the case with rabbits. They are always shot just before hibernating, because, as they put on new robes for the winter, their skins fetch the best prices. Moreover, the animals become fat, as is the case with all hibernators, and so their flesh is in good condition for the table. Squirrel-pie is a well-known luxury in some parts of England, and is far superior to rabbit-pie, as it is free from the peculiar flavor which attaches itself to the rabbit, and to many persons is exceedingly repulsive.

The winter nest is a very large one, containing at least four or five times as much material as would serve for a summer's nest. Instead of being placed at the end of a bough, it is always set in the hollow caused by the junction of several large branches with the trunk. The exterior is so skilfully formed, that when the tree is viewed from below, even the most practised eyes will often fail to detect the nest, large as it is.

The amount of material which a squirrel employs in this nest is really wonderful. I have taken out of a single nest armful after armful of leaves, until quite a large mound was raised at the foot of the tree, and I should think that there was enough material to fill two large wheelbarrows, even if it were pressed down closely.

I may here mention that the nest of the squirrel is known in some parts of England by the name of "drey," and in others by that of "cage." The latter term is employed in the New

Forest.

The house being ready, next comes the task of laying up a store of food. This consists chiefly of nuts, which the animal chooses with marvelous sagacity, or rather, instinct. No one ever yet found an unsound or worm-eaten nut in a squirrel's

store.

The animal does not rely on a single storehouse, but hides its treasures here and there within easy range of its nest. Many nuts it buries, and owing to this habit, nut-trees are apt to spring up in unexpected places, for, if the weather should be exceptionally severe, the squirrel awakens but seldom from its winter sleep, and so does not need the store which it has hidden. Or, it may die or be killed after it has laid up its food, and so the buried nuts will take root and produce trees.

sap, so that the tree died. In order to save it from being blown down, the trunk and branches were cut away some feet above the stone. On my last visit to Walton Hall, shortly before Mr. Waterton's death, the stone was still suspended above the ground, and as a memorial of so remarkable a result of hibernation, I made a careful sketch of it, which was published by Messrs. Macmillan.

It is also noticeable as an example of the slow, silent, and almost irresistible power of vegetation. Even the soft and pulpy mushroom has been known to raise a flat, heavy pavingstone fairly off the ground. Had the mushrooms been allowed to grow, and the paving-stone laid on them, it would have crushed them under its weight. But the vital powers of growth are so tremendous, even when acting upon so feeble a medium, that they performed a feat which would have been thought impossible had it not been witnessed.

In some parts of South America, where the growth of vegetation is surprisingly rapid, there used to be, and may be still, a mode of inflicting capital punishment by the power of vegetation. We all know the sharply-pointed and bayonet-like leaves of certain aloes. The victim was simply fastened to the ground over a spot where an aloe was just starting from the earth, and before a day had gone by, the leaves would grow completely through the body.

I briefly mention these examples in order to show how all nature is linked together, and that the hibernation of animals and the growth of vegetables are parts of one great system.

Owing to the manner in which the squirrel disperses his treasures, we can not tell the amount of the store required by each animal, but in Northern America we find one which gives the needful information. This is the chipping squirrel, chipmuck, so called from its cry. Its scientific name is Tamias Lysteri.

It is a little creature not larger than a two-thirds grown rat, and is very conspicuous on account of the black and yellow stripes which run along its back. Being a creature which leads a subterranean life for the greatest part of its time, it does not possess the bushy tail of the tree-inhabiting squirrels. Its underground habitation is a most elaborate composition of galleries and chambers, so that there is plenty of space for storage. Audubon once dug up a nest inhabited by four chipping squirrels, and found in it two pecks of acorns, a quart of large nuts, rather more than two quarts of buckwheat, besides

In former days there had been in the estate an old wooden mill. It had been disused for many years, and at last the only relic of it was the upper millstone which was left on the ground. The reader may be aware that the center of the upper stone is pierced with a tolerably large hole, through which the corn makes its way between the stones.

In the autumn of 1813, some nut-eating, hibernating animal, almost certainly a squirrel, had found this stone, and thought that the hole would make an admirable hiding-place for a nut. For some reason, the nut was never eaten, and consequently began to germinate. Mr. Waterton, who pervaded his grounds at all hours of day and night, detected the green shoot at once when it appeared in the spring of the following year. Foreseeing that the shoot, if it lived long enough to become a tree, would raise the stone from the ground, he had a fence put round it, and gave special orders for its preservation.

His prevision proved to be perfectly correct. In course of years, the little shoot became a large tree twenty-five feet in height, and bearing fine crops of fruit annually, and Mr. Edmund Waterton told me that in his boyhood he had often climbed it for the purpose of procuring nuts. After the stem was large enough to fill the orifice in which it had been planted it lifted the stone, and raised it some eight or nine inches above the ground.

As might be imagined, in the course of years the pressure of the stone destroyed the bark, and stopped the circulation of the

ering that the animals would pass the greater portion of the winter months in lethargy, and would only eat at long intervals, the amount of food is really surprising.

In former days, when the red men were supreme and depended solely on hunting for their food, many a tribe has been saved from extermination for want of food in the winter time by digging up the nests of the chipping squirrel, and eating the inhabitants as well as their stores.

In the dormouse we have another instance of hibernation brought into contact with man.

This pretty little creature, which is too familiar to need description, possesses in a great degree the power of becoming fat toward the end of autumn. The ancient Romans were well aware of this fact, and had regular establishments called "gliraria" for the express purpose of fattening dormice for the table.

The dormouse makes a singularly comfortable nest for itself. It is nearly spherical and is composed externally of grass blades woven together in a very ingenious manner. The animal only leaves a small aperture, concealed by grass blades which can be pulled asunder when the inmate enters or leaves the nest, and which resume their position like the folds of a drawn curtain. I once had a remarkably fine specimen of a dormouse nest which was cut out of a hedge. The curtain of grass blades was so admirably formed that it could seldom be detected by any one who did not know the specimen.

Around, but not in this nest, the dormouse places its store of