SUMMER MEETING AT OREGON. 133 



The nursery agent is a "fiend." He packs good trees outside and 

 culls inside the bundle, and is gone before the sheriff can catch him. 

 Culls at one cent per hundred are dear — •' old oak or new oak ! " 



Yours truly, 



S. P. CONNER, 



Mr. L. a. Goodman, Secretary Missouri State Horticultural Society. 



Dear Sir : — I regret that it will not be possible for me to meet 

 with the Society at Oregon, June the 5th, and I wish to again express 

 thanks for courtesies received from the Society, and to say that we now 

 own a miniature farm in the suburbs of Sedalia, and that I am going to 

 try my hand at floriculture and horticulture, and expect next year to be 

 able to give some practical results of the experiment. 



Will you kindly please to thank Mr. Laughlin (for me) for the splen- 

 did defense of the birds which he published some time ago in the Rural 

 World. These feathered benefactors of the human race are being so 

 cruelly and wantonly sacrificed in all parts of the world, that I am in- 

 favor of instituting Audubon societies in every neighborhood, town and 

 city in our land, for the protection of the defenseless warblers. 



When we first moved into this new home the matin songs of a 

 grand chorus of birds woke us from our slumbers at the dawn of each 

 day, but soon the crack ot the sportsman's gun was heard daily,- until 

 now only a few birds remain and they are shy and seem to be in abso- 

 lute terror of every human thing they see. Robins, blue birds, martins, 

 red birds, the little grey larks, the mocking-birds, all driven away by 

 the wanton foolishness of a man with a gun and no intellect to guide 

 its use. 



I have decided never to wear a hat or bonnet with a bird's wing 

 fastened upon it, as long as I live, and I wish there was something more 

 that I could do to help protect the beautiful birds which help so much to 

 brighten and cheer the world, not to mention their value as insect de- 

 stroyers. Sometimes I almost find myself wishing that these careless 

 slayers of the innocent might be confined on a desert island in mid ocean 

 where no bird ever tarried and no flowers ever grew. There ought to be 

 some punishment for them and when women begin to legislate, I hope 



