I do hope the words "polar circles" will bring clear ideas to you, my dears. They've quite tangled up my notions. Wont some of you explain the things to me?
BIRDS AND TELEGRAPH-WIRES.
The Little Schoolma'am has been talking about snow-birds, and she says there was a poem about them in ST. NICHOLAS for April, 1875, and also a picture of the dear little fellows comfortably perched on a telegraph-wire, out in Colorado, somewhere. I dare say you'll remember them, my chicks.
Well, she went on to say that telegraph-wires are not always such good friends to birds, for she had heard that, along the great railroads in the West, large numbers of prairie-chickens are killed at certain seasons of the year by flying against the wires. Sometimes this may happen in the dark, but more often in the day-time when the wind is very strong.
Of course, this can't very well be helped; but it does seem dreadful, doesn't it, my dears? However, the section-men, who have charge of the railroad tracks, get some good from it, for they make a regular business of gathering the fallen birds, which are then cooked and eaten.
WALTON'S KITTY AGAIN.
Dear Jack: A while ago I told in ST. NICHOLAS something about "Walton's Kitty," that loves music and climbs upon any one who sings to her, putting her head as close as can be to the lips of the singer. Now, here is another true story about this same cat:
In the summer, Walton's aunt used to set the milk in a cool closet, in a pitcher with a long, narrow neck, but day after day, when teatime came, every drop of that milk was gone. Nobody drank it, nobody used it, nobody spilled it. "Walton's Kitty" and all her descendants were clear of suspicion, because of the long, narrow neck of that pitcher. So everybody watched and waited to find out how the milk went.
And this is what they saw: There sat "Walton's Kitty," dipping her paw deep down into the pitcher, taking it out, and then lapping the milk from it! If she dropped the smallest drop, she stopped and cleaned that up, and then went on. As the milk dwindled to the bottom of the pitcher she shook her paw around; and she never left off until every drop of milk was gone!
Since then, the milk for tea stands in a covered pitcher, but "Walton's Kitty" has hers in a tall, narrow goblet. It is a very affecting sight, and people laugh till they cry as they watch her.—Yours truly,
M.B.C.S.