Cloyd D. B.—Write again, and tell us how you amuse yourself while you are sick, and we will try to print it. Your last letter was so much a business communication that we could not put it in the Post-office Box.
Jacksonville, Florida.
I saw a letter from Indian River, so I thought I would write too. I have a little sister, five years old, who goes to a Kindergarten school. I have a little turtle, and I would like to know how to feed it. I am almost nine years old.
Ralph D. P.
Turtles like a diet of flies, and small insects, and fruit. You will find directions for the care of different kinds of turtles in the Post-office Box of Young People No. 5 and No. 18. The "Letter from a Land Turtle," in Young People No. 27, will also give you information.
I thank Zenobia in regard to the whip-poor-wills, but she does not say when was the earliest she heard them this year. The first one I heard was on the morning of March 30, which is the earliest I ever heard one in this locality. Zenobia lives farther north than I do, and probably whip-poor-wills are not so early in her vicinity. I want to learn all I can of this mysterious bird, and would be thankful for any information concerning its habits. If Zenobia will send me her address, I would like to exchange pressed Missouri flowers for Illinois flowers with her. I have pressed flowers from California and Tennessee, and I have been studying botany this spring.
Wroton M. Kenny,
Pineville P. O., McDonald County, Missouri.
The whip-poor-will is a native of North America, and is found from the Pacific to the Atlantic. In winter it travels southward, and spends the cold season in the forests of Central America. It is a brownish-gray bird, and has a large mouth, armed with bristles at the base of the bill, with which it retains the moths and other soft-bodied insects upon which it feeds. It is a very shy bird, and hides itself all day, coming out at evening and early morning to skim along with noiseless flight near the ground, seeking its food. It is sometimes called the night-swallow. It makes no nest, but deposits two greenish eggs, spotted with blue and brown, in some snug corner, among fallen leaves, on the ground.