688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



regulates and straightens the streams, clears the shrubbery from 

 pastures and meadows and groves, and trims gardens and orchards 

 with a view to the largest crops, the birds can find no homes or 

 nesting-places, and of course can not thrive. 



In our neglect of care for birds we have failed to keep in check 

 their natural enemies, which are able to do relatively more dam- 

 age than ever before. These include four-footed beasts, birds of 

 prey, thieving birds, and our own domestic cats and dogs, with 

 rats; to which may be added the hardships of weather, that bear 

 more severely upon birds than in former times, because of the 

 removal of the sheltering woods under which they could once cover 

 themselves, and the modern bird-killing inventions of telegraph 

 wires and electric lights. 



The capture of birds for pets is a factor of a little importance 

 in promoting their disappearance ; hunting them as game is a 

 more important one ; while the destruction of birds for the sake of 

 their feathers, whereby women may gratify their desire for show, 

 has reached a frightful extent. 



Before considering what measures may be taken to obviate the 

 danger of extermination to which birds are exposed, it is proper 

 to inquire what these creatures signify in our economy, and whether 

 their preservation is necessary or desirable. 



To my mind, the highest value of our wild birds I speak of 

 birds in general, while I refer especially to those smaller creatures 

 which we describe as song birds lies not in the useful service they 

 may do to us, although that is not to be underestimated. I am 

 still of the opinion, which I expressed more than a quarter of a 

 century ago, that their aesthetic influence, the effect they exert 

 upon our spirits and in developing our sense of beauty and our 

 appreciation of all that is pleasant and lively in Nature, is of 

 much higher value. We could hardly imagine a landscape of our 

 country, with its alternations of hill and valley, field and wood, 

 pasture and meadow, threaded with streams or dotted with lakes, 

 not enlivened by nimble birds. How bare and empty would our 

 orchards appear, even in the splendor of their spring bloom, with- 

 out the twitter, the clear songs, the joyous melodies, and the cries 

 of the robins, bobolinks, cat-birds, and blackbirds that haunt 

 them ! For any real enjoyment of Nature, we must have the 

 brisk, songful, and noisy bird-life around us. Further than this, 

 we can not doubt that birds, in freedom as well as living with 

 us in our rooms, may be a means of instruction lasting through 

 life, and exercise a profound influence upon youth, by awaking 

 in them an interest in natural life, and leading them to the enjoy- 

 ment and love of all that is in Nature, particularly in its animal 

 and bird life, and thus eventually to become students of its works 

 and phenomena. In large cities the birds and the flowers are not 



