Egg‑Collecting
T
HERE are many boys who collect birds’ eggs.  Properly conducted, the practice has everything to recommend it, for it provides an instructive and delightful hobby.  Many boys are very much in the dark as to how to go to work in the business of bird‑nesting.
The season for egg‑collecting is from late April to June.  In taking an egg from the nest of any bird, you must never destroy a single egg: you must take no more eggs than are required for your collection, or for the purpose of exchange with any other collector, and you must never harm the parent bird unnecessarily.  Neither must you destroy or damage the nest in any way whatsoever.
In the month of April the eggs of the following birds may be looked for Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Crow, Hedge-sparrow, Jay, Linnet and Magpie.
I would certainly not go anywhere out in the country or from the haunts of man.  Most of our British birds are at least fairly sociable feathered folk, who do not object to human beings, if not too near.  In addition to that the birds know that near to the habitation of man there is always food.  Therefore, I advise, you to go egg‑collecting in the gardens and shrubberies near houses.
R. Davies (Form Ia.)
Lethe
If, drifting down the river of oblivion,
My course is stayed perchance by island home
Of fleeting happiness, from such temptation
Let me not seek to flee, or elsewhere roam ;
Let me not steer around its sable shore,
Or seek some darker region in the shade,
But let me land, abandon my dread spoor,
Upon this happy fortress make a raid.
For Life is barren of such joyful isles,
And though Hope tells me there is one in sight,
If I but land, and seek for Fortune’s smiles,
Oblivion's swelling tide puts joy to flight.
And I am left clinging to some lone peak—
A fading memory of some happy heart ;
Lonely, Oblivion’s loneliest ocean I must seek,
For ever from Life’s brighter light depart.
Yet my drifting eyes strain across the grey
Waters that so swiftly bear my tired soul ;
Longing that happy island music play
Upon my sad cars, deafened by the roll
Of dark Oblivion’s roaring ocean swell.
For, drifting with the tide, I deem it good
To strive, e’en though my foolish heart knows well
Success is always cloaked beneath a veil.
J. S. Boobyer (Form VIA.  Arts).