i6o BIRD WORLD. 



so that tJiey may wear their phnnage on their hats. Some- 

 times people kill us from mere wantonness. Cruel boys 

 destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our yotmg ones. 

 People with guns arid snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the 

 place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop 

 window, or imder a glass case. If this goes on much longer, 

 all your song birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in 

 some other countries that tised to be full of birds, they are 

 almost gone. Even the 7iightingales are being all killed in 

 Italy. 



Now we humbly pray that you will stop all this, and will 

 save us f^om this sad fate. You have already m,ade a law 

 that no one shall kill a harmless song bird or destroy our nests 

 or our eggs. Will you please to make another that 7to one 

 shall zvear our feathers, so that 7to one will kill us to get 

 them ? We wajit them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are 

 pretty enough without them. We are told that it is as easy 

 for you to do it as for Blackbird to whistle. 



If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred ti^nes over. 



We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat. 



We will show them how to live together in peace and love and 

 to agree as we do in our nests. We zuill build pretty houses 

 luhich you will like to see. We ivill play about your gardens 

 and flower beds, — ourselves like flowers on zvings, — without 

 any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked insects and 

 worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and 

 apples and roses. We zvill give you our best songs and make 

 the spring more beautiful and the summer szveeter to you. 

 Every June morning when you go out into the field, Oriole 



