and each hill of corn the same distance from its neighbors, he first marked off the ground in squares whose sides were about three and one half feet long. "Now," thought he, "I will reap the reward of my labor." The corn grew rapidly, and toward the end of the first dry season was filling out and ripening its ears. But to Robinson's dismay a new danger threatened his crop against which he could not fence. He was in despair. The birds were fast eating and destroying his partially ripened corn. He could not husk it yet. It was not ripe enough. He thought how easy it would be to protect his field if he had a gun. But he had learned that it is useless to give time to idle dreaming. He must do something and that quick. "If I could catch some of these rascals," he thought, "I would hang them up on poles, dead, as a warning to the rest." It seemed almost a hopeless task, but he went about it. It was in vain he tried to kill some of them by throwing rocks and sticks. He could not get near enough to them. At length he laid snares and succeeded in snaring three birds. He had learned to weave a pliable, strong thong out of cocoa and other fibre that he was now acquainted with. The birds thus caught he fastened on broken branches of trees which he stuck into the earth in different parts of his field. The birds heeded the warning and visited his corn field no more that season. At the end of the season he gathered or husked his corn and after it was thoroughly dry he shelled it from the cob with his hands. He used his baskets in which to carry his husked ears from the field to his cave and in which to store it when shelled. He found that the ears were larger and better filled and plumper than when the plants grew wild. He selected the largest and best filled ears for his seed the next time. In this way his new crop of corn was always better in kind and yielded more than the old one. At first he grew two crops a year, but by experimenting he found out about how much he needed for his own use and planted once a year enough to give him a liberal supply. He observed that the wild rice grew in swampy lands, so that he did not make the mistake of trying to raise it upon the upland where the corn grew best. He saw at once that the planting of rice on low, marshy or wet land was beyond his present strength and tools. "Some time in the future," he thought, "I may try it." Robinson also found wild grapes in abundance. These he dried by hanging them on the branches of trees. He thus had a store of raisins for each rainy season.