s it is opposite the dining-room window, it is very
interesting to see a tame jay and sundry squirrels enjoying the acorns
which were collected for them last autumn and stored up so as to keep
the basin well supplied all through the winter and spring, until other
food should be plentiful. Finches, robins, and sparrows find wheat and
crumbs to their taste, and take their daily bath not without some
squabbling as to who shall have it first--a difficulty which is
sometimes settled by a portly blackbird appearing on the scene and
scattering the smaller folk, whilst he takes his early tubbing and sends
up showers of spray in the process. Very pretty are the scenes on that
same stone basin when in early summer a mother bird brings her little
tribe of downy, chirping babes, and feeds each little gaping mouth with
some suitable morsels from the store she finds there.

A sheaf of corn in winter is also a great boon to the starved-out
birdies, when snow has long deprived them of their natural food, and the
water supply has to be often renewed on freezing days, for many a bird
dies in winter from lack of water, all its usual supplies being frozen.
The tameness of birds in severe weather is a touching sign of their
distress, and a mute appeal to us to help them.

"The fowls of heaven
Tam'd by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them."

It is pleasant to think that they seldom appeal in vain. "Crumbs for the
birds" are scattered by kindly little hands everywhere in winter, and in
many a house a pet sonsie little robin is a cherished visitor, always
welcome to his small share of the good things of this life.

Our ramble might be indefinitely prolonged and still be full of interest
and instruction, but in these simple remarks enough has been shown, I
trust, to lead many to _think_ and _observe_ closely every, even the
minutest, thing that catches their attention whilst out for a ramble in
lanes and fields, even a microscopic moss upon an old wall has been
suggestive of many lovely thoughts, with which I will conclude our
ramble and this chapter.

"It was not all a tale of eld,
That fairies, who their revels held
By moonlight, in the greenwood shade
Their beakers of the moss-cups made.
The wondrous light which science burns
Reveals those lovely jewelled urns!
Fair lace-work spreads from roughest