Direct the children to put up boxes for martins, bluebirds, and wrens. These may be also put up around the schoolhouses, if fortunately there is a yard with trees. Boxes for the martins should be large, containing fifteen or more compartments, each ten inches high by eight wide and eight deep, and each having a separate entrance. The martin box or house should be placed twenty feet from the ground, upon the top of a strong post or platform sustained by four smaller posts. If vines are planted at the foot of the supports, they will be ornamental and will make the houses more attractive to the birds. The English sparrows will occupy these compartments; but if the martins conclude to take possession they will push out the sparrows and their belongings without assistance. Every spring I am amused in watching the summary process of ejectment which the martins serve upon the sparrows that have taken possession of their houses. In the morning the sparrows may be in undisturbed possession, but by afternoon the martins occupy their old quarters, having pushed out the nests of the sparrows with their eggs or young.

The boxes for bluebirds and wrens should be smaller and have only one compartment. They should be nailed in the tops of trees. If the English sparrows build in them their nests should be broken up; and this repeatedly, so long as they persist in building. If this is not done the wrens and bluebirds will not come. They are incapable of coping with the sparrows.

Note when the different birds arrive in the spring, making in this way a bird calendar.

Notice also when the birds gather together into flocks in the late summer or autumn, preparatory to taking their leave. The last bird of his kind to leave should be as carefully noted as the first to arrive in your calendar. Distinguish carefully the birds of passage that stop only a short time to rest on their journeys north and south, and those that stay and help to make the summer.

You will need to make frequent excursions afield, always taking your notebook. Take first a small area and master the birds in that; then gradually extend your territory. You can take no more healthful or happy exercise. It will greatly increase the interest of children in all their school duties if their teachers make occasional bird journeys with them. Limit the size of the party to that number which will keep still as a mouse while in bird-land. Encourage the children also to make frequent excursions by themselves, in parties of three or four. Instruct them to have the sun at their backs and to carry if possible one glass with each party. Reports of these excursions can be made in school, while particular attention should be given to the exchange of the knowledge of bird haunts. This can be done during the period devoted to bird study.

Direct the party of excursionists to observe the same birds, notebook in hand, and let each one immediately put down what he actually sees. Afterward compare results. In this way improvement will be made in rapidity and accuracy of observing.

There are two ways by which birds may be closely approached. The first is to go to some locality where birds have been seen and to stand or sit in perfect quiet and wait for them to come. We have known some of the shyest wood birds to come within a few feet of the motionless observer. It is not an uncommon thing for one who waits to be able to look directly into the eyes of the American redstart, the chestnut-sided and golden-winged warbler, the wood thrush, catbird, and of almost any other of the birds.

If one can imitate the owl and make a fair "hoot," otherwise keeping still, he may attract many birds that will feel bound to settle the question of his identity. A young friend of mine, by a good imitation of a blue jay's quack, finds many little woods' folks peering at him from the trees which he might not otherwise see. The "smack" which is produced by violently kissing the back of the closed fingers will call many birds from their hiding places, especially during the nesting season. The sound is similar to that of a bird in distress.

The second method is to follow a bird very quietly and slowly, being careful not to make any motions which would startle him. In this way a shore lark has been followed all over a field, the observer gradually coming near enough to the bird to see what he was doing, and to watch his movements as he pulled the larvÆ of beetles out of the ground, cracked their cases, and ate the contents. All birds that feed in the fields, the meadow larks, the plovers, and the sparrows, may be studied in the same way.

It is commonly thought to be difficult to get close to the veery. On one occasion, while the writer and a companion were resting from a long ramble, the air was suddenly suffused with the songs of veeries. The music seemed to fill the woods, as an organ seems to fill the church with sound. It was weird and suggestive and never to be forgotten. The still, deep woods seemed like enchanted ground where nothing evil could come. After some search we saw one of the birds in a tree not far from us. As we approached him he flew to another tree. We humbly followed on foot from tree to tree, when to our surprise he stopped on a low tree on the outskirts of the wood and allowed us to come almost within reach of him, and to stand wonder-stricken while he sang in answer to his companions. We stayed for twenty minutes motionless. It was difficult to believe that this bird was singing. His notes had a ventriloquous effect, his beak was scarcely parted, and it was only by the trembling of the feathers of his throat that we were sure the song came from him. Since this time we have frequently found the veeries; in fact one locality is known to us as Veeryville.

It is not necessary to live in the country in order to be a bird student and to carry out the suggestions here given. All the large cities have parks where birds may be observed and be encouraged to become friendly to the observer. Central Park in New York is the home of a great variety of birds. Bronx Park is said to be a paradise for them. On Boston Common most of the birds which come to that latitude have been seen. There is no city so poor that it cannot boast of a few birds in its vicinity.

Great interest and delight may be added to the study of birds by the use of the camera. If the teacher or one of the older pupils is so fortunate as to have a kodak and will take it when visiting the woods, or will focus it upon birds in the dooryard, the pictures may possess much value. To attempt to "take" a bird in flight is, of course, a difficult matter, though it may be done; but birds upon the nest, birds feeding their young, or in the trees above the nest, evidently protecting it, have been successfully taken. Birds' nests with the eggs in make most fascinating pictures. At an entertainment given by the Pennsylvania Audubon Society in Philadelphia in December, 1898, the audience with one accord cheered the picture of a nest which was thrown upon a screen.

Work of this kind is especially adapted for high schools, and there are sure to be several painstaking amateurs among the pupils. To possess genuine value from the point of view of the naturalist, the pictures should not be touched up, no matter how much artistic beauty might thus be given to them; they should be entirely true to nature.

On no account should children be encouraged to make collections of birds or of eggs. The only objection the author has felt to the very fine bird manuals before the public is that they contain minute directions for the preparation of dead birds for purposes of mounting and preservation, and also for the collection and preservation of birds' eggs. If this were to cause the school children of the country to set out to make collections of birds and of eggs in order to study them, the study would better be omitted. Nothing more deadly than an opera glass should be aimed at a bird for a generation. The utility of a collection is not so great; a dead bird's plumage is not as beautiful as in life, and he loses every attitude and movement which makes him an individual. A corpse is not a bird. Persons who can identify birds by one glimpse of them through the trees, or by a few notes of their song, or by their flight are frequently at a loss to identify the same birds when they are dead, unless they are familiar with the dead birds.

The only collection the children should be encouraged to make is that of nests after the birds are through with them; and especially of nests with whose family history they are acquainted. These may be brought into the schoolroom. In one of our school yards the children discovered a pair of red-eyed vireos building. The nest was so situated that it could be seen from one of the upper schoolroom windows. After the young had left, the nest was taken down, and to the pleasure which the children had enjoyed in watching its builders and their family was added another. They found in the bottom of the nest little bits of the papers they had used in school with their letters and figures upon them.