school to set a few snares or dead-falls in the nearest thicket. Or on a Saturday, taking such dogs as they own or can borrow (most dogs, like most boys, seem to be ready to hunt rabbits), they can set out for the brush lots and stubble fields, and revel in excitement as the sharp bark of the dogs lets them know that a fresh track has been struck.

When cold weather and snow come, the rabbit is apt to desert his snuggery in the fields for a home in some well-built stone wall. Then the boy hunter lets the rabbit betray himself, and very plainly he does it; for no boy who is once shown a rabbit track in newly fallen snow can ever mistake for it the track of any other animal: two dots before, and two behind, like this, · · :, are the rabbit's handwriting, and a little skill soon traces him to his hiding-place.

To secure game birds requires more skill with the gun, and a more intimate knowledge of their habits. Our principal game birds in the Eastern States are the woodcock, the quail, and the ruffled grouse, or, as it is called in some States, the partridge. Of these the woodcock is the most mysterious, and by epicures the most highly prized. It is the only one of the group that seeks a warmer climate in winter.

With the first advent of spring weather the woodcock returns, often nesting so early that the spring floods destroy its eggs. By the first of July the young birds are almost grown, and in too many States the law allows them to be killed after that date. The summer woodcock is, however, no such bird as it will become if allowed to moult, and then to grow fat in the corn fields and brakes. October finds it strong of wing, ready for a night flight of many miles; then it may be sought not only in the low grounds, but on the alder-covered hill-sides.

The quail is the best known of all our game birds, because of its remaining with us all the year round, because of its easily recognized note, "Bob White," and because, timid as it is, it loves civilization, and lives on cultivated lands.

The ruffled grouse may be called the king of our Northern game birds. Delighting in mountains and thick swamps, wild, and strong of wing, the hunter who brings one down when under full headway must be of steady nerve, quick sight, and skillful with long practice.

If a modern artist were to draw a sketch to illustrate an article on our hunting season, it would have to differ very much from the pretty picture on the preceding page. The spear and cross-bow are weapons unknown to modern American hunters, and instead of the winding of the horn, there is only the shrill note of the dog whistle. And we may say, Alas the change! The spear was not always thrown aright; it and the arrow hit but one object at a time, and had a limit to their flight. But nowadays, with our highly trained dogs, and our ever-loaded breech-loading guns, able to mow down a whole flock at once, what chance has bird or animal, however well provided by nature with means of safety?

Little is the wonder that our game grows scarcer year by year. With no vast landed estates, as in England, to be kept stocked and preserved, it will not be very long before woodcock, quail, and grouse will be curiosities even to the farmers' boys, who will have to invent some new pleasure to take the place of the hunting sports of which their grandfathers will tell them.

CLAVICHORD.

THE PIANO-FORTE.

BY MRS. JOHN LILLIE.

I wonder how many young people who sit down to practice or take a lesson at the piano-forte know the story of the instrument now familiar in every household of the civilized world. Look at it as we have it to-day, almost perfect in size and quality and tone. It is capable of producing the fullest and the softest sounds, just as its name indicates, for piano means soft, and forte means loud. Can you realize that little more than a hundred years ago pianos were a rarity? Only one or two makers produced any instruments worthy of the name, and few households possessed one. "But," I can hear my young readers exclaim, "the music we play on our pianos—Bach and Haydn, as well as old English airs—were certainly played on some horizontal instrument." Of course they were, but not on our kind of piano-fortes; and the story I am going to tell will take you back far into the sixteenth century, when ladies of rank, and monks and nuns, and some troubadours, had the instruments from which our piano is descended. These were known as the clavichord and the virginal.

The clavichord was perfected about 1500, and the name was derived from "clavi" (a key) and "chorda" (a string); so you see at once that it contained the two principal elements of our piano-forte. Although it went out of use in Bach's day, yet that dear old master, whose gavottes all our young people are playing now, loved to use it. The piano-forte had been invented, but Bach loved his old clavichord. As he sat thrumming it, I think he liked to fancy himself away in the early sixteenth-century days, when Henry the Seventh's court enjoyed madrigals and queer little bits of music on the same sort of an instrument. Following the clavichord, we have that graceful, romantic instrument called the virginal. This was an improvement on the clavichord, and toward the close of the sixteenth century we find its name in poetry, romance, biography—indeed, in history.

VIRGINAL.

The virginal produced a low, tinkling sort of sound not unlike that of the German zither. Only ladies of quality, musicians, or nuns or monks in convents, performed upon the virginal, and so I think we associate it with all the grace and beauty and the slow stateliness of that romantic epoch. When I think of a virginal, it seems to me to bring many suggestions of rich colors, softly fading lights, the flash of jewels, or the movement of white hands, oak wainscoting, and tapestried walls—perhaps some very sad and sorrowing heart, perhaps some young and hopeful one, but always something that is picturesque and dreamy.

Perhaps we would not think it so sweet an instrument to-day, but assuredly in the sixteenth century it moved people to very tender, elevated thoughts. Shakspeare wrote of it with deep feeling, and there are some quaint lines of Spenser's about it. "My love doth sit ... playing alone, careless, on her heavenlie virginals."

In 1583, Sir James Melvil was sent by Mary Stuart to England as Ambassador, and in his memoirs he relates how he heard Queen Elizabeth play. He says that Lord Hunsden took him up into a "quiet gallery," where, unknown to the Queen, he might hear her play. The two gentlemen stood outside a tapestried doorway, from within which came the soft tinkle-tinkle of the virginal. I wish he had told us what the Queen was playing. Presently, it appears, his curiosity to see her Majesty overcame his prudence, and he softly raised the curtain, and went into the room. The Queen played on, "a melody which ravished him," he says, but for some moments did not see that any one was listening. Is it not a pretty picture?

At that time the Queen had not lost the charm of youth, and in her splendid dress, with her head down-bent, her figure at the quaint virginal against the rich and sombre colors of the room, must have looked charming, and the silent Scotch gentleman just inside the doorway listening in rapt attention: it is so poetic a picture of the time that we can almost hear her music, and if we read on a little further, we see that the Queen, suddenly seeing Sir James, came forward, remonstrating with him for having come in, for, she said, she was