"Robin, robin redbreast, Singing on the bough, Come and get your breakfast, We will feed you now. Robin likes the golden grain, Nods his head and sings again: 'Chirping, chirping cheerily, Here I come so merrily, Thank
Once upon a time the owl and the raven were fast friends. They lived beside the same stream. They built their nests in a tree side by side. They sang the same songs. They ate the same food. They wore dresses of the same pale gray. There was
"Haw-haw! Hoo! hoo!" Phyllis listened again. "Haw-haw! Hoo! hoo! Hoo! Hoo!" "Oh, I see you now!" laughed Phyllis. The owl moved silently as a shadow and perched very near to the little girl. His great round eyes and his yellow bill gl
Away, away in the Northland, Where the hours of the day are few, And the nights are so long in winter They cannot sleep them through; Where they harness the swift reindeer To the sledges, when it snows; And the children look
Comes north about first or second week in April. Remains until late September or October--builds and travels in flocks or companies--winters in South or Central America. Song--a constant twitter. Head and upper parts except forehead steel blue
Notes--deep-toned, startling hoot. Heard most frequently at nesting time. Upper parts brown, marked with white--face gray, mottled with black, wings and tail barred with brown, eyes blue black, bill yellow, under parts buff marked with dark
Male arrives north middle of May.--Female comes some ten or twelve days later--travel generally by night and in flocks.--Flies south from August to October. Song is most musical and sweet, expressing joy and careless happiness--the song of th
HITHERTO, ever since he had been old enough to leave the den, the mother bear had been leading her fat black cub inland, among the tumbled rocks and tangled spruce and pine, teaching him to dig for tender roots and nose out grubs and beetles from
THE little old gray house, with its gray barn and low wagon shed, stood in the full sun at the top of a gullied and stony lane. Behind it the ancient forest, spruce and fir and hemlock, came down and brooded darkly over the edge of the rough, stum
I FAR to the northeast of Ringwaak Hill, just beyond that deep, far-rimmed lake which begets the torrent of the Ottanoonsis, rise the bluff twin summits of Old Walquitch, presiding over an unbroken and almost untrodden wilderness. Some way up t
I NORTHWARD interminably, and beneath a whitish, desolate sky, stretched the white, empty leagues of snow, unbroken by rock or tree or hill, to the straight, menacing horizon. Green-black, and splotched with snow that clung here and there upon
CHAPTER I The Sound in the Night UPON the moonlit stillness came suddenly a far-off, muffled, crashing sound. Just once it came, then once again the stillness of the wilderness night, the stillness of vast, untraversed solitude. The Boy lift
[June 18, 1892.] If you think this little anecdote of canine friendliness worthy of the Spectator, will you insert it for me? Last week a sick dog took up its abode in the field behind our house, and after seeing the poor thing lying th
[May 18, 1895.] Being a frequent reader of anecdotes of the sagacity of animals in your paper, I think you may consider the following trait of character in a dog worthy of notice. Jack, a rough-haired fox-terrier of quiet disposition, b
[May 20, 1876.] As a subscriber to your journal, I have observed from time to time discussion on the "reasoning power of dogs." I will tell you what I observed to-day. In consequence of the Levee there was a great crowd in Pall Mall. I
[June 8, 1895.] The interesting letter, "A Canine Nurse," in the Spectator of May 18th, recalls to mind an equally curious event in cat and dog life which occurred some years since in a house where I was living, but with the additional
[Aug. 11, 1894.] We stood at the bottom of a deep valley with the hills rising abruptly on either side, when Robert Scott said: "Yonder is the sheep I led away from Llangynider, all those weary miles yesterday. I saw it as I came over t
Most of our animals, also many creeping things, such as our "wilde wormes in woods," common toads, natter-jacks, newts, and lizards, and stranger still, many insects, have been tamed and kept as pets. Badgers, otters, foxes, hares, and voles are
I "And what is it makes you think I could be of use in this particular case?" asked Dr. John Silence, looking across somewhat sceptically at the Swedish lady in the chair facing him. "Your sympathetic heart and your knowledge of occultism--"
Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us, was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so uncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have been asked by those who personally knew him t
One of my comrades there--another of those victims of eighteen years of unrequited toil and blighted hopes--was one of the gentlest spirits that ever bore its patient cross in a weary exile: grave and simple Dick Baker, pocket-miner of Dead-Horse
On a fair Saturday afternoon in November Penrod's little old dog Duke returned to the ways of his youth and had trouble with a strange cat on the back porch. This indiscretion, so uncharacteristic, was due to the agitation of a surprised moment, f
It is now more than a quarter of a century since I saw the woods of Mount Shasta in flames, and beasts of all sorts, even serpents, crowded together; but I can never forget, never! It looked as if we would have a cloudburst that fearful morning.
Mount Sinai, Heart of the Sierras--this place is one mile east and a little less than one mile perpendicular from the hot, dusty and dismal little railroad town down on the rocky banks of the foaming and tumbling Sacramento River. Some of the old
I know an old Indian who was terribly frightened by an old monster grizzly and her half-grown cub, one autumn, while out gathering manzanita berries. But badly as he was frightened, he was not even scratched. It seems that while he had his head
"And round about the bleak North Pole Glideth the lean, white bear." Nearly forty years ago, when down from the Indian country to sell some skins in San Francisco, I saw a great commotion around a big ship in the bay, and was told t
Not long ago, about the time a party of Americans were setting out for India to hunt the tiger, a young banker from New York came to California to hunt what he rightly considered the nobler beast. He chartered a small steamer in San Francisco Ba
"Your invitation, sir, to dine With you to-night I must decline Because to-day I lost a friend-- A friend long known and loved;" thus penned The good Sir Walter, aptly named The Wizard of the North, and famed For truest, gentlest
I own a dog who is a gentleman; By birth most surely, since the creature can Boast of a pedigree the like of which Holds not a Howard or a Metternich. By breeding. Since the walks of life he trod, He never wagged an unkind talk abr
... "In life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still his master's own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone." "Near this spot Are deposited the Remains of on
Now that no shrill hunting horn Can arouse me at the morn, Deaf I lie the long day through, Dreaming firelight dreams of you; Waiting, patient through it all, Till the greater Huntsman call. If we are, as people say, But the
I am quite sure he thinks that I am God-- Since He is God on whom each one depends For life, and all things that His bounty sends-- My dear old dog, most constant of all friends; Not quick to mind, but quicker far than I To Him whom