of itself be a very comprehensive subject. The following description of the genus Ursus and the species Ursus horribilis are taken from Cecil's Books of Natural History, by Selim H. Peabody:

All the species of bears have great size, large limbs, and heavy gait. They walk upon the flat soles of their feet, and are, therefore, with the raccoons, called plantigrades. The print of the foot of a black bear, left in the soft earth, resembles very much the impression of a man's hand-fingers, thumb, and palm being distinctly marked. This form of foot takes away much of the swiftness which beasts of prey usually possess. The dog and cat families move upon their toes, or digits, and are called digitigrades. Bears' feet have five toes, armed with large, strong claws, fit for digging and climbing, rather than for holding prey or tearing flesh. They eat a variety of food, and, besides flesh, are fond of nuts, acorns, berries, growing corn, and young grain.

They seldom attack man, unless driven by severe hunger, or provoked; but when angry, are very dangerous. They are not only savage, but solitary; making their lonely dens in the most secret and inaccessible places. In winter they sleep in their dens, in some cavern of the rocks, or in the hollow of some old tree. Here they pass months, without food, in a torpid state, breathing so gently and slowly that one would hardly suppose them alive. As the winter passes, their fat wastes away; until, when they crawl forth in the spring, they seem to have slept off all their flesh.

The Grizzly Bear, Ursus horribilis, is the most powerful and dangerous wild beast of America. He is from six to nine feet long, and sometimes weighs as much as eight hundred pounds. His hair is longer and finer than that of the black bear, and the color varies from a grizzly gray to a light brown. The hair on the legs and feet is darker and shorter than that on the body; on the face it is so short and pale as to make the creature seem bald; on the neck it grows to a stiff, coarse mane.

The feet and claws are very large. measured by Lewis and Clarke, was

The forefoot of a specimen nine inches broad, and was

These claws are not pointed,

armed with claws six inches long.

but are thin and wide, fitted to dig in the earth.

Notwithstanding his size, his unwieldy form, and his shambling gait, he runs with great speed, and his strength overcomes even that of the bison. The Indians regard him with superstitious awe, and make preparations to hunt him with many ceremonies.. A necklace of bears' claws, which can be worn only by the brave who has himself killed the bear, is a mark of great valor, and entitles the wearer to peculiar honors. Since the Indian has learned to use the rifle, the risk is somewhat less than when he fought Bruin with arrows and spears; yet, with fire-arms, a steady hand and sure aim are necessary, for a wounded, angry bear is very dangerous. There can be no escape; life is staked against life.

Do not feel restricted to the subjects given in these lists; they are offered merely as examples. If no one of them suits you, select something else, provided only that it be in the line of the general subject. In the present exercise it should deal with some phase of animal habits or animal activity. This is an interesting and almost inexhaustible field.

Have you sometimes wished to visit a foreign land where new customs and laws obtain, where the food and dress of the inhabitants, the art and commerce, the

implements of war and the regulations for peace, are all strange to you? It is easily done. Visit an ant-hill, a bee-hive, a bear-pit. Go out into the garden and overturn a stone, and see if you do not find there a most cosmopolitan community.

The following is an example of a short essay written from observation of this kind:

LILLIPUTIAN ENGINEERS.

While walking along a trail in the mountain one day, my attention was attracted by a community of red ants that were busily engaged about the little mound which arose above their underground dwelling. Evidently they had a difficult task before them, to judge from the way in which some of them kept running about, while a few others stood surveying a pebble the size of a small marble which lay dangerously close to the entrance in the top of the mound and which they seemed to want removed. Soon the engineers for such I took those to be that were examining the pebble seemed to have solved the problem, since all set busily to work excavating a ditch just beyond the pebble. When this was almost completed the last grains of sand that held the pebble were carefully removed by two of them, and it gave a partial roll. The same operation was performed again and again, and they would surely have completed their task alone, had I not given them a helping hand.

My theory was that the intelligent little creatures feared lest the pebble might cave in on them when they should tunnel out their upper compartments.

F. G. K.

Again we extract from Cecil's Books of Natural History:

HOW THE WASP MAKES HER NEST.

When quite a little boy, the writer used to go away alone into a closet to learn his lesson. The blinds at the only window in the room were always closed, giving barely light enough to read

when sitting on a stool beneath it. One spring day a wasp came between the blind and the glass, and after much buzzing and much walking about, began to build. She first laid down, beneath the under edge of the upper sash, a patch of paper about a third of an inch in diameter; then, standing on this, she raised cupshaped edges all about her, increasing outward and downward, like the cup of an acorn, and then drawing together a little, until a little house was made just about the size and shape of a whiteoak acorn, except that she left a hole in the bottom where she might go in and out.

Then she began at the top, and laid another cover of paper over the first, just as far away as the length of her legs made it easy for her to work. Now it was clear that she made the first shell as a frame or a scaffold on which she might stand to make the second. She would fly away, and after a few minutes come back, with nothing that could be seen, either in her feet or in her jaws. But she at once set to laying her paper-stuff, which came out of her mouth, upon the edge of the work she had made before. As she laid the material she walked backward, building and walking, until she had laid a patch a little more than an eighth of an inch wide and half or three-quarters of an inch long. When laid, the pulp looked like wet brown paper, which soon dried to an ashen gray, and still resembled coarse paper. As she laid the material, she occasionally went over it again, putting a little more here and there, in the thin places; generally the work was well done the first time.

So the work went on. The second paper shell was about as large as a pigeon's egg; then a third was made as large as a hen's egg; then another still larger. After a time the wasp seemed to go inside to get her material, and it appeared that she was taking down the first house and putting the paper upon the outside. If so, she did not bring out pieces and patch them together as a carpenter, saving of work, would do, but she chewed the paper up, and made fresh pulp of it, just as the first was made. Of course the boy did not open the window, for he was too curious to see the work go on, and then he was afraid of the sting. How large the nest grew he never learned, for he soon after left the school, and saw no more of it.

EXERCISE XXVIII.

NATURE AT REST.

Subjects:

View from My Window.

High Noon on the Plains.
Eagle Lake by Moonlight.
Mt. Shasta.

School-Girl's Glen.
Yellowstone Park.

A Winter Scene.

You must already have realized how difficult it is to arouse and hold the reader's interest by purely descriptive composition. Interest centers most naturally about life, about the variety and uncertainty that are found wherever there are continual changes. In the description of inanimate or quiescent objects these elements are lacking and the sources of interest must be sought elsewhere. Much can be trusted to the aesthetic sense, more or less developed in all of us, which finds pleasure, or it may be, its opposite, in the mere contemplation of form and color. But this sense will weary readily and the most exalted description which appeals to it alone may not safely be carried very far. Therefore brevity is to be sought.

Even the briefest description may be made extremely monotonous. This inevitably happens when it is a mere catalogue of details, strung together like beads on a string, without any grouping or organic connection between them. "Give each feature only that prominence which its importance warrants," was recommended.. a few pages back. It might be inferred from this that some features deserve more attention than others. And