.

Most Americans know an orange by sight, and we of California count it
a blood relation. We do grow the best orange in the world, and ship
thousands of loads of it in a year; and we have a modest notion that
we invented it, and that we "know oranges." But the handsomest, the
fullest and the most erudite treatise on oranges ever printed does not
derive from California, nor yet from the Only Smart Nation.... On the
contrary, it was printed in Rome in the year 1646.... More accurate
drawings of these fruits have never been printed; and the
illustrations cover not only the varieties and even the "freaks" of
the Golden Apple, but the methods of planting, budding, wall-training
and housing it. Perhaps the point likeliest to jar our complacent
ignorance is the fact that this venerable work describes and pictures
seedless oranges, and even the peculiar "sport," now an established
variety, which we know as the "Navel." Two hundred and fifty seven
years ago it was called the "Female, or Foetus-bearing orange;" but no
one today can draw a better picture, nor a more unmistakable, of a
navel orange.

CHARLES F. LUMMIS,
in _Out West._

AUGUST 6.

THE SIERRA NEVADAS.

Serene and satisfied! Supreme! As lone
As God, they loom like God's archangels churl'd;
They look as cold as kings upon a throne;

* * * * *

A line of battle-tents in everlasting snow.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

AUGUST 7.

TO THE VIOLET.

Welcome little violet,
I gladly welcome thee;
Peeping with thy dewy eyes
So shyly out at me.

Modest little violet
Hide not thy face away.
I love thee and thy sweet perfume,
Thy purple-hued array.

Sweetest little violet,
I'll pluck thee gently dear,
I'll nurture thee so tenderly--
Then have of me no fear.

Sweetest little violet,
Delight of every heart;
No flow'ret rare is like thee fair,
None praised as thou art.

BERTHA HIRSCH BARUCH.

AUGUST 8.

August is a word of dire import in the bird-lover's calendar. It means
virtually the end of the bird season. The wooing and nesting and
rearing the family are all over, and now looms before the feathered
population that annual trouble--the change of dress, the only time in
his life--happy soul!--that he has to concern himself about clothes.

In the business of getting a new suit he has more trouble than a fine
lady, for he has to shake off the old garments, while getting the