THE BIRDS OF THE ADIRONDACK S. 



47 



up every unsoaked kernel and leaving the others. You may draw 

 your own moral, but I am satisfied that the crow will not eat food 

 saturated with alcohol. He is either too uncivilized or too in- 

 telligent. 



Orioles and other birds sometimes give us much annoyance by 

 eating the green peas from our gardens, and, except in the case of 

 English sparrows, we do not like to shoot them. I once killed a 

 hawk and roughly stuffed it with straw, putting it on a pole near 

 my pea vine, where the birds collected in numbers to scold and 

 peck at it, but they were afraid to touch the peas, and finally left 

 mine for those of my neighbors across the street. 



The Acadian owl is a pretty, cunning-looking little bird, not 

 much larger than a robin. He is the smallest of our owls and 

 quite tame, and is not often se,en around my home. Some two years 

 , ago, while hunting with my brother we saw one of these little birds 

 on the limb of a tree not far from the ground, and we concluded to 

 try and snare him. We cut a long pole and made a slip noose with 

 a shoe string, and while my brother kept the owl's attention by 

 standing in front of him I slipped the noose over his head from 

 behind. When we had the owl we wanted to tie him, and since we 

 could not spare the shoe string for that purpose, my brother de- 

 cided to tie him with his watch chain. He snapped the catch 

 around one leg, and while trying to fasten the other leg the owl 

 made a flutter and got loose, and the last we saw of him he was 

 sailing over the tops of the trees with the watch chain hanging 

 to his leg. 



I have always taken an interest in birds because I have loved 

 them, but it does not follow that I know much about them. Some 

 one said that the more we know men the less we love them, but 

 that man was an old cynic and doubtless told an untruth. Certain 

 it is that the more we know our native birds the more we love 

 them, and it is one of the encouraging signs of the day that it has 

 become fashionable for young people to take an increasing interest 

 in the birds and wild flowers of their own country, and a young 

 person would hardly be considered accomplished to-day who is en- 

 tirely ignorant of at least the common names of the flowers that 

 bloom in our fields and woods and the birds that pour out their 

 ecstatic music from our trees and hedges. 



Herbert Spencer's work on Education has been translated into San- 

 skrit by Mr. H. Soobba Row, who gives as his reason for publishing a 

 version in an " unspoken " language that the pundits, for whom the ver- 

 sion is primarily intended, " can more easily appreciate the ideas con- 

 veyed in Sanskrit than perhaps in any other vernacular." 



