This minute description is intended for identification; it must have sequence and fulness.

3. Continuity of Details. The details are brought forward in a rational order: first, the body of the plant; then its leaves, then its individual flowers; then the clusters of flowers; then how the plant grows; finally, its essentially wild habit.

4. Fulness. This orderly plan helps to ensure on the writer's part attention to all necessary details (economy and sufficiency of details), while it guides the reader to a clear and faithful mental image of the object.

IV. Composition.-1. Describe the Trailing Arbutus, following the preceding outline.

2. Give a scientific description of one of the following: (1) The Dandelion. (2) The Sunflower. (3) Hollyhocks. (4) The Sweetbrier. (5) The Violet. (6) Lilacs. (7) Magnolia. (8) The Wheat Plant. (9) The Buckwheat Plant. (10) Indian Corn. (11) The Ivy. (12) Seaweed.

3. Describe the Apple-tree:-Place of growth-Relation to the crab-apple-Trunk-Leaves ovate, woolly beneath, acute, crenate-Flowers-shape, colors, fragrance, cluster-Fruit-shape, color, fragrance, tasteImportance to mankind.

4. Describe one of the following:-(1) The Peartree. (2) The Peach-tree. (3) The Chestnut-tree. (4) The Elm. (5) The Willow. (6) The Grape-vine. (7) The Spruce and the Hemlock. (8) A Pine Forest.

CHAPTER II.-BIRDS AND INSECTS

LESSON XLIV.

I. Memorize:-FROM "THE GREEN LINNET."

Upon yon tuft of hazel trees,

That twinkle to the gusty breeze
Behold him perched in ecstasies,
Yet seeming still to hover;

There! where the flutter of his wings
Upon his back and body flings
Shadows and sunny glimmerings,
That cover him all over.

My sight he dazzles, half deceives,
A bird so like the dancing leaves;
Then flits, and from the cottage eaves
Pours forth his song in gushes;

As if by that exulting strain

He mocked and treated with disdain

The voiceless form he chose to feign,

While fluttering in the bushes.

-William Wordsworth.

II. Theme: "THE BOBOLINK."

The happiest bird of our spring, and one that rivals the European lark in our estimation, is the bob-olincoln, or bobolink, as he is commonly called. He arrives when Nature is in all her freshness and fra

grance-" the rains are over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land."

This is the chosen season of revelry of the bobolink. He comes amidst the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree or on some long flaunting weed, and as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich tinkling notes, crowding one upon another like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character.

As the year advances, as the clover blossoms disappear, and the spring fades away into summer, ho gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical suit of black, assumes a russet, dusty garb, and sinks to the gross enjoyments of common vulgar birds. His notes no longer vibrate on the ear; he is stuffing himself with the seeds of the tall weeds on which he lately swung and chanted so melodiously. He has become a gormand.

In a little while he grows tired of plain, homely fare, and is off on a gastronomical tour in quest of foreign luxuries. We next hear of him with myriads of his kind, banqueting among the reeds of the Delaware, and grown corpulent with good feeding. He has changed his name in travelling. Bob-o-lincoln no much-sought titbit of Pennsylvania epicures. Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock in the country is blazing away.

more, he is the reed-bird now, the

Does he take warning and reform? Alas, not he! Incorrigible epicure! again he wings his flight. The rice-swamps of the South invite him. He gorges himself among them almost to bursting; he can scarcely fly for corpulency. He has once more changed his name; and is now the famous rice-bird of the Carolinas.

Last stage of his career,-behold him spitted with dozens of his corpulent companions, and served up, a vaunted dish, on the table of some Southern epicure!

Such is the story of the bobolink, once spiritual, musical, admired, the joy of the meadows, and the favorite bird of spring; finally, a gross little sensualist who expiates his sensuality in the kitchen.

-Washington Irving. Abridged from "The Birds of Spring."

III. Principles-Embellished Description.-The chief distinction between scientific description and literary description lies in the difference of suggestion the two forms offer. Read the description of the Trailing Arbutus on p. 169 and then read Lowell's poem on the Dandelion,

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,

First pledge of blithesome May,

Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o'erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth's ample round

May match in wealth-thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer blooms may be.

-James Russell Lowell.

The poet's object is not to give facts but to give suggestions, to stimulate the mind to activity by bringing forward associations, especially the human associations and human import, of the thing described. The artist aims to give the life, color, movement, setting of the object, and so to stir our utmost interest in the thing described.

The Salient Characteristic.-The first necessity of artistic description is to see in the object its salient characteristic, and to present that, even if nothing else is presented. Dickens shows the value of this principle when he writes:

In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile.

The Misses Mould were chubby damsels, with peachy cheeks, distended, as though they ought of right to be performing on celestial trumpets.

Irving, in the theme above, aims, not at simple truth of detail, but at lively impressions; he would reproduce by his writing the joyousness of nature, the sunshiny song, the changes and chances of the bird's life. Notice the elements in this description that are not exactly matter-of-fact-the literary references, the comparisons, the figurative expressions and picturesque phrases. It is by reason of these additions to matterof-fact that the description glows with life. Irving writes embellished description, full of suggestion. The bobolink comes, not in springtime, but when "Nature is in all her freshness and fragrance"; he ceases to sing, not in summer but as the clover blossoms disappear." The bird does not change his plumage, but "doffs his poetical suit of black," etc. It is de