Running on the level ground, the weasel is a very awkward-looking animal; the length and slenderness of his body and the shortness of his legs are very much against speed; but in climbing up trees, or threading the galleries of mice, this disproportion is of the greatest use to him. I have watched him coursing along the boughs of a tree with the security of a squirrel. In wheat-ricks he is perfectly at home. I have seen him enter a rick at the bottom, and in less than a minute peep out from under the thatch, following of course the road already excavated by the mice. Gifted with strength, activity, and courage, the defenceless mice fall an easy prey to him; and as he eats only the brain, the number destroyed would be immense, and he would soon clear the fields and barns of these little robbers, if men did not interpose to stop him. But owls and weasels, though not such robbers as mice and rats are treated by many as if they were.

We have given these pictures and pieces about grouse birds and field-mice, as this is the season of the year when they are most noticed; and it is always very interesting and pleasing to observe the habits of the many singular creatures with which the Great Creator has peopled this earth.

THE gentleman who wrote what we have given above about the mice, relates also the following singular tale of a weasel and a rat.

But weasels have courage to attack, and strength to master, a much larger animal than a mouse. While seated with a friend on a stile at Northbrook, a large rat came bustling down the hedge before us, bringing with him a lot of loose earth; my friend was just on the point of jumping down for a stone to whirl at him, when a little weasel followed the rat down the bank, holding his head well up, like a foxhound running breast high. The rat had crossed the path, and got into a little low bank on the other side, over which he scrambled, and came out among some Swede turnips in the adjoining field, at the very moment the weasel went into the low bank hunting for him. The turnips were so small, and so far apart, that we did not once lose sight of the rat. He ran in and out among them, continually crossing his own track; and then making a little circle, he came to the bank, a good way from where we sat, and climbing over it, got into the footpath about a hundred yards from us; he then ran towards us with all his might, straight along the middle of

the path, and under the stile on which we sat motionless and smiling, and about ten yards behind us he went into the thick bank, and was lost to view. The weasel hunted well in the little low bank, and seemed a good deal puzzled, staying there much longer than the rat. At last he seemed to find out that the game had taken to the turnips; here he hunted with great eagerness, and finding the trick that had been played, he made a cast like a well-trained fox-hound, going completely outside all the trail; by this device he hit off the scent. In a few moments he was in the footpath, gallopping towards us in fine style, his back arched, his head up, his tail in a straight line behind him. He passed under us, and in his eagerness overshot the spot where the rat went into the bank: it was but for a moment: he came back, quartered the ground, found the trail, and was up the bank in no time. A black thorn overhung the path; something moved in it; the rat dropped-the weasel dropped too; we heard a long squeal-then a shorter squeal-then all was still. We went to the spot; the weasel left his prey spitting like a cat: the rat's brain was laid bare, but his heart beat for near a minute as I held him in my hand.

FACTS FOR LITTLE FOLKS.

A SABBATH SCHOLAR DROWNED.—If I had kept an account of all the boys who were drowned when bathing during the summer of 1850 as I read of them in the newspapers, I might have almost filled this page with their names. And many of them were drowned on the sabbath-day! A boy, about twelve years old, who came to our sabbath school, went one sabbath morning instead of coming to school, and going to a place called "the round hole," got into it, and sunk to rise up no more alive. Next sabbath I talked to all the children about it, from, "He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more." They were all very attentive and much affected, and his brother, a bigger boy, wept sadly that he should see his face no more.

GALLANT CONDUCT OF A YOUTH.-As several boys were bathing in the Freshney Creek, near Pewit Inn, Grimsby, among them was Thos. Wardale, who was unable to swim. On the bank were two boys watching them, they having just bathed and dressed; one of the two could swim-the other, Thos. Hewson, son of Mr. Edward Hewson, postman of Grimsby, could not. Wardale suddenly disappeared, and came up again and disappeared three times, and was going down for the last time, when young Hewson rushed in with his clothes on, seized the drowning boy by the hair, and, after placing his own life in the most imminent peril, succeeded in saving the lad. Having got him out, he and his companion conveyed him to his mother and brothers, one of whom fell on his knees and offered up a prayer of thanksgiving to God for so providentially saving the life of his drowning brother.

MY MOTHER'S LOVE.

Thy nightly visits to my chamber made,

That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid."

COWPER.

THE Jews had a legend or tradition, which many of them believed, that every human being was attended by a good or bad angel-the good to guard and help him-the bad to injure and mislead him. This idea might have its origin in truth, as there are passages of Holy Scripture which represent holy angels as the appointed guardians of the pious.