long to put up his bird houses. When I saw him again, in mid-April, he said that one pair of bluebirds had nested in a house that he had intended for chickadees; that another pair were in an old hollow tree; and that a pair of wrens were visiting the new bluebird house.
Two of his other houses were for woodpeckers, and a beautiful new one for purple martins already had some tenants.
"It is two years now that the first martin house has been up, and yet I have never had any martins to stay!" said the boy. "They would come, go into the house and twitter, and then fly away."
He began talking again about his manual training teacher: how she called one day, and told him that the martin house was mounted too low, and too near trees; that martins want to be fifty feet away from a tree or building, and sixteen feet up from the ground; also, that it pleases martins to have openings near the ceiling of their rooms so they can have a change of air.
I remarked that this ventilation would make their rooms more comfortable.
"Yes," said the boy; "and this new martin house is made according to teacher's directions."
As we stood there, martins were flying about, twittering, singing, perching on the telephone wires near by and on the roof and the porches of their house. The pole had hinges so that the house could
