, a sympathy of spirit, which binds us all together, and we are
glad.

Yet these sweet sounds of the early season,
And these fair sights of its sunny days,
Are only sweet when we fondly listen,
And only fair when we fondly gaze.

There is no glory in star or blossom
Till looked upon by a loving eye;
There is no fragrance in April breezes
Till breathed with joy as they wander by.
William Cullen Bryant.

THE SIMPLE ART OF SAPSUCKING

The yellow-bellied sapsucker is, at this time of year, one of our most
abundant woodpeckers, and in its life we have an excellent example of that
individuality which is ever cropping out in Nature--the trial and
acceptance of life under new conditions.

In the spring we tap the sugar maples, and gather great pailfuls of the
sap as it rises from its winter resting-place in the roots, and the
sapsucker likes to steal from our pails or to tap the trees for himself.
But throughout part of the year he is satisfied with an insect diet and
chooses the time when the sap begins to flow downward in the autumn for
committing his most serious depredations upon the tree. It was formerly
thought that this bird, like its near relatives, the downy and hairy
woodpeckers, was forever boring for insects; but when we examine the
regularity and symmetry of the arrangement of its holes, we realise that
they are for a very different purpose than the exposing of an occasional
grub.

Besides drinking the sap from the holes, this bird extracts a quantity of
the tender inner bark of the tree, and when a tree has been encircled for
several feet up and down its trunk by these numerous little sap wells, the
effect becomes apparent in the lessened circulation of the liquid blood of
the tree; and before long, death is certain to ensue. So the work of the
sapsucker is injurious, while the grub-seeking woodpeckers confer only
good upon the trees they frequent.

And how pitiful is the downfall of a doomed tree! Hardly has its vitality
been lessened an appreciable amount, when somehow the word is passed to
the insect hordes who hover about in waiting, as wolves hang upon the
outskirts of a herd of buffalo. In the spring, when the topmost branches
have received a little less than their wonted amount of wholesome sap and
the leaves are less vigorous, the caterp