ceedingly fond of birds. There are more kinds of birds than there are kinds 

 of fishes, and serpents, and animals combined. The largest of all the kingdoms 

 of sentient life is the kingdom of the birds. I do not wonder that the Man of 

 Galilee cried with delight: ''Look at the birds!" God is saying that all the 

 time, if we only had ears to hear. He keeps his eyes on them through all the 

 days. Not one of them can fall without his notice. Jesus was sure that if men 

 would only look at them, they would come to know better the wisdom and the 

 goodness of God. 



If God, then, be fond of birds, is it not strange that humanity should be 

 so indifferent to them? There are bird lovers in every community, but their 

 number is nowhere large. Mankind may be said to be, on the whole, hostile to 

 birds. Even in Christian countries it is necessary to organize societies for the 

 express purpose of protecting birds and saving them from extermination. Even 

 though men are not hostile to them, they are often indifferent to them. They 

 seldom look at them. They take no delight in them. They ignore them as crea- 

 tures uninteresting and not worth attention. 



This indift'erence is surprising when we remember that birds are easily seen 

 and are always inviting us to look at them. Unlike fishes and serpents, they 

 are not hidden from our eyes, but place themselves in the sunlight so that we 

 can see what they are. Unlike many other creatures, they are beautiful both in 

 form and in movement and often in color. The coloring of birds is one of the 

 miracles of creation. In some of them the colors are splendid, in others they 

 are gorgeous, in others they are positively dazzling. When you want to see 

 delicate shadings, and exquisite gradations of color, and artistic designs which 

 cannot be matched in the factories or studios of men, go to the breast or the 

 wing of a bird. There are more colors in the plumage of birds than are dis- 

 played in the foliage of a landscape on a bright summer afternoon, more varieties 

 of rich and vivid hues than the ocean shows when it breaks into spray and the 

 sunbeams and foam are intermingled, more than the sky can hold even when 

 the dawn is breaking or when the sun is dying in the west. This color in the 

 plumage of birds is the Lord's doing, and it ought to be marvelous in our eyes. 

 Feathers do not come together in such a way as to form an exquisite pattern 

 with not a line unbroken, and with every matching of color absolutely perfect, 

 without the patient attention of a superintending mind. A bird is proof that 

 the Almighty is an artist, but many of us are too stupid to open our eyes and 

 look. 



But even though we are indifferent to them, they forgive us, and remain 

 our steadfast friends. They come even into the city. They settle in the trees 

 in all our parks. They are not at all aristocratic. They frequent the parks in 

 those quarters of the city where only poor people live. They visit prosaic back 

 yards. No matter how poor or mean the tenant, they will visit a back yard if 

 only a tree or bush be there. A woman in a Western city counted fifty-seven 



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