but in its warm southern home it sometimes bears flowers when it is only ten or fifteen years old. The flower stalk shoots up forty feet above the thick, hard, spiny leaves, and bears clusters of greenish yellow flowers which stay in bloom for several months.

CENTURY PLANT

But the plant is remarkable not for its beauty, but for its usefulness. It means to the Mexican what the date palm does to the Arab, what the bamboo does to the Chinese, and what the cocoa palm means to the Pacific Islander.

Needles are made from its sharp spines, and thread from

its coarse, leaflike fibers, which also furnish flax for weaving into cloth. Paper and soap are

sometimes manufactured from the leaves.

The long flower stalks are dried and used for thatching houses. Fence wood and fire wood are also furnished by the dried stalks.

The Mexicans are very fond of a wine called pulque, which is made from the sap drawn from cuts in the stem. Sweet things and sour-honey, sugar, and vinegar-are all made from the sap. In temperate and in cold parts of the United States, and in England and France, the century plant usually grows in greenhouses; but in Spain, in Italy, and in northern Africa it grows out of doors just as it does in Mexico and the hot countries of South America; but our Mexican neighbors make more use of it than the people of other countries do.

THE PETER-BIRD

WHEN summer's birds are bringing

Their clear, concerted singing,

Singing gladder, gladder, gladder in their glees;

When finches and the thrushes

Make vocal all the bushes,

And the lark his note of morning welcome frees —

I hear no meter sweeter

Than "Peter-Peter-Peter,"

That the Peter-bird is singing in my trees.

How good to lie and listen,

Where brooks in summer glisten,

As they ripple, ripple, ripple to the seas;
Where faintly in the pebbles

They play their pretty trebles

In the plaintive, sad and tender minor keys;

But they can play no meter

Like "Peter-Peter-Peter,"

That the Peter-bird is singing in my trees.

When softly at the nooning

I hear the clover crooning

Of its nectar, nectar, nectar and the bees;
When corn a-field is drying,

And fading blades are flying

With a floating pennon-rustle in the breeze,

Oh, sweet it is, but sweeter

Is "Peter-Peter-Peter,"

That the Peter-bird is singing in my trees.

When summer's joy is over

And bees have robbed the clover,

Leaving odor, only odor, to appease ;

When red autumnal juices

Make music in their sluices,

As the fruity currents gurgle from their lees; The wine-tide sings not sweeter

Than"Peter-Peter-Peter,"

That the Peter-bird is singing in my trees.

THE CHILDHOOD OF BIB-NECK

PART I

DOWN on the beach among the sand dunes at Cape Lookout, there is a certain small stretch of desert where the sun shines warm, and the fierce gales which sweep over the ocean never strike, except as in little eddies they whisk around the dunes and blow the dry sand rattling among the broken seashells.

On this small, sandy desert one June morning a young bird for the first time peeped out with its little, round eyes. It did not distinctly see, or hear, or think anything. All it cared for was the pleasure of being out of that horrid old shell, and

feeling the warm sun on its head and the soft sea wind blowing the ends of its downy feathers.

However, it soon began to notice things. Its eyes opened a little wider, and it could see the warm, white sand everywhere and the waving sea oats on the dunes round about, and could hear the dull roar of the waves pounding over on the beach. By its side lay two other little birds, its sisters, and also a spotted egg sharply pointed at one end. Their nest was a mere hollow in the ground, which the mother had scratched out and lined with a few smooth pieces of shells; but it was quite enough for the short time these little beach babies would need a home.

The mother was standing near and the youngster enjoyed looking at her. The feathers of her breast were very white, whiter even than the sand, and she wore a dull gray coat above. About her white neck was a gray belt, like a bib so loose that it had slipped down on her breast. How large she was, too! She could stand and look over the largest shell on the beach, for she could she was five or six inches tall.

reach up until

She had long,