armed with claws six inches long. These claws are not pointed, 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 æsthetic 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. back. It might be inferred from this that some features deserve more attention than others. And

so they do. Everything, from a leaf to a landscape, has its striking and distinguishing characteristics which must be seized upon and transmitted, first, last, and always. That individuality which nothing permanent loses in nature should not for a moment be lost in art. Subordinate, in spite of all temptation to the contrary, that which is manifestly subordinate. Is the view from your window charming? Discover, if you can, what particular elements in it make it so. Is it restful, or depressing, or inspiring, or sublime? Try above all to convey to your reader the impression that it is restful, or depressing. Beware of telling him bluntly that it is so; that were inartistic and ineffective. To assert again and again that a thing is beautiful, only tantalizes a reader. He can get little conception of beauty out of the word beautiful, and the little he gets may be entirely false. Give him the impression as nearly as you can in the way in which it was given to you. That is to say, reproduce the picture accurately for him and let it make its own impression.

MODEL.

MT. KENESAW.

The sun was slowly sinking beneath the gray line of mountains in the west. The ascent had been steep. Leo and I had been climbing rapidly, pausing only once or twice on the way up to breathe. The air of northern Georgia makes one equal to almost any task, however, and we were at last standing upon the summit which Sherman, twenty-seven years before, had striven so vainly to reach.

The only obstacle that Mt. Kenesaw had offered us was its own steep and rugged sides, and we now rested upon its huge, unguarded embankments, the silent witnesses once of that bloody struggle, and looked down at the scene of beauty and repose lying