Bird Gods in Ancient Europe 



eager to lay it low ; its musical plaint, as it 

 called to its mate, did not charm my savage 

 breast. I fired. As the creature fell like a 

 piece of clay, I bounded forward with a wild 

 joy at my prowess and picked up the still 

 quivering body from the carpet of pine-needles 

 where it lay. 



Then I was sorry. Not that I at all realized 

 the enormity of the act. Not that I dreamed 

 that I should live to see this exquisite, inno- 

 cent, useful creature, and a hundred other 

 species of songsters, insect-eaters, warblers 

 gone from the woods and fields they enlivened 

 and benefited, massacred by thousands, netted, 

 their nests robbed and destroyed, their colonies 

 annihilated ! But for a moment I had a glim- 

 mer of the truth. Because it was thought by 

 other boys manly to have a gun and hit to 

 kill, because thousands of men boasted of the 

 " bags " they had made, I was doing the same 

 thing, destroying for the sake of slaughter 

 without the sting of necessity. Even then it 



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