beneath them. In a moment a weasel came in fu1l course upon his trail,
ran up the tree, then out along the branch, from the end of which he
leaped to the rocks as the squirrel did, and plunged beneath them.

Doubtless the squirrel fell a prey to him. The squirrel's best game
would have been to have kept to the higher tree-tops, where he could
easily have distanced the weasel. But beneath the rocks he stood a
very poor chance. I have often wondered what keeps such an animal as
the weasel in check, for weasels are quite rare. They never need go
hungry, for rats and squirrels and mice and birds are everywhere.
They probably do not fall a prey to any other animal, and very rarely
to man. But the circumstances or agencies that check the increase of
any species of animal are, as Darwin says, very obscure and but little
known.




BEES.



AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE.



There is no creature with which man has surrounded himself that seems
so much like a product of civilization, so much like the result of
development on special lines and in special fields, as the honey-bee.
Indeed, a colony of bees, with their neatness and love of order, their