The American cuckoo does not adopt the indolent and dishonest ways of the European cuckoo about its nest. It lives in thick woods, and builds a nest of sticks and grass on the branch of some low tree. Its eggs are bright green, and it lays four or five. We are sorry to say that while its food is chiefly insects, snails, and berries, it sometimes steals and sucks the eggs of other birds. There are three kinds of cuckoo in the United States. The commonest has a yellow bill about an inch long, is greenish-brown above, and grayish below. One of the world's great poets, Wordsworth, wrote some beautiful stanzas addressed to this bird, in which he asked whether it were really a bird or only a wandering voice. It is very shy and solitary, but its note is cheery in the spring and summer.
Ingersoll's patent rubber family font, price $1, for the first volume of Young People, or a three-draw spy-glass. Send postal before exchange.
Fred Williams,
Box 80, Rockland P. O., Ontonagon, Mich.
Mexican garnets, and jasper stones from York Beach, Maine, for ores, fossils, and agates; or ocean curiosities, and pressed ferns and leaves, for minerals, petrifactions, and pressed sea-weeds; also two ounces of colored sand from York Beach, Maine, for the same from other localities. Please label specimens.
S. and L., Box 62, South Berwick, Me.
Acacia or cotton seed, specimens of Texas rock or soil, for Indian relics.
C. H. Dobbs, Jun.,
Robinson, Texas.