AN ELOQUENT PLEA FOR BIRDS. 



AN ELOQUENT PLEA FOR BIRDS. 



BY WILD FLOAVER, NEW-ENGLAND. 



["We heartily sympathise with the following eloquent and beautiful appeal for the little 

 feathered creatures of the air, from our fair unknown correspondent in New-England. If 

 there is any common sight more truly mean and contemptible in our eyes than another, 

 it is that of a biped, with a gun on his shoulder, making game of blue birds and sparrows. 

 And yet our community is, for the most part, callous to the commission of the sin. We re- 

 commend such to the perusal of the following, and pray that their consciences may awa- 

 ken. Ed.] 



Mr. Downing — I did not think to have trespassed on your kindness again, or ventured 

 before so wide an audience, even behind my friendly veil. But this time my errand is not 

 to my own sex. I am figuratively on my knees to the gentlemen. Not to any, howev- 

 er, who have a right to smile at my petitioning humility. I come as a memorialist before 

 the law makers of our country, to beseech them for my friends, my companions, my dar- 

 lings, the little birds. Even as I write, the song of a blue-bird, shivering in this untime- 

 ly snow, seems in its plaintive cheerfulness to encourage my undertaking. Gentlemen of 

 the legislatures ! past, present, and to come, you are very good to the eatable fowls of 

 heaven; woodcock, snipe, partriges, quails, all feel the weight of your protecting influ- 

 ence, but who cares for the singing birds? If they were nightingales, indeed, and their 

 tongues a "lordly dish," as once they were to the Roman epicures, the friendless things 

 might hope for a reprieve; but now they sing their gentle life away, withoi:^t confidence or 

 hope in its endurance. Da3'-b3f-day, boys, who ought rather to be barrelled up with a 

 spelling-book till they come to years of discretion, shoulder their old fowling pieces and stroll 

 the fields with some attendant cur, to try how many dear, harmless, happy little crea- 

 tures, they can deprive of all they possess, their life; indeed, I grow indignant at the 

 thought. Here the blue-birds sing peacefully, and the song-sparrow warbles with confi- 

 dent sweetness, for no wandering biped comes within these bounds unquestioned by a 

 great dog, happily gifted with a bark much beyond his bite. But in the fields about, I 

 see almost daily one of these little stalking Herods, bent on the murder of these next love- 

 liest thing to children, the innocents of dumb creation. I know very well, they seem to 

 you comparatively useless; they don't do anything but sing. Neither does Jenny Lind! 

 AVill you call the fair Swede a useless unit in creation? Is it no good to awaken in so many 

 tired and dusty hearts the breath of hope, and the pulses of nature? And the birds are 

 the poor man's orchestra, the country-girl's concert, the interpreters of earth's great la- 

 boring heart and sealed lips. Theirs is an incessant psalm of gratitude, always har- 

 monious with the deep chorus of the inanimate music of creation. They teach us the 

 very lessons of heaven, hope, faith, charity. They are the first to celebrate the slow 

 steps of spring; the last to leave us in the advent of frosty winter; the heralds of rain to 

 the thirsty earth; the prophets of sunshine to the frozen ground. They are the poets of 

 those flowers that live and die unseen of man; and in their tiny love songs tell us, who 

 listen, fairy tales of desolate water-lilies, and gorgeous painted-cups that the summer- 

 moth has deserted. 



Beside, they eat up bugs! Am I coming to common-sense now? I avow it as my firm be- 

 lief, that all the discussions about the curculio which vex the horticultural soul from day 

 to day, would come to a peaceful end if there were birds enough to eat the creatures up. 

 Were our fore-fathers beset with these spoilers of the fruit? Did not my grand-mother's 



