1 66 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



II. 



" O'er fell and fountain sheen, 



O'er moor and mountain green, 

 O'er the red streamer that heralds the day. 



Over the cloudlet dim. 



Over the roinbow's rim. 

 Musical cherub, soar, singing away ! 



Then when the gloaming comes, 



L,ow in the heather blooms. 

 Sweet will thy welcome and bed of love be! 



Emblem of happiness. 



Blest is thy dwelling-place, 

 O to abide in the desert with thee !" 



I have not mentioned why birds should be perpetuated. 

 Either from an aesthetic or economic point of view, birds are of the 

 utmost value, and to all persons of average intelligence this fact is 

 too apparent to need mention. 



In the supplement to Science of February 26, 1886, Mr. J. A. 

 Allen, of New York, has one of a number of very able papers 

 on the destruction of bird life in the United States. In this paper 

 he speaks of one of the important agencies in bird destruction as 

 the "small bad boy " — and in an ornithological sense his name is 

 legion — of both town and country. Bird-nest robbing is one of the 

 besetting sins, one of the marks of natural depravity of the average 

 small boy, who fails to appreciate the cruelty of systematically rob- 

 bing every nest within reach, and of stoning those that are other- 

 wise inacessible. To him the birds themselves too are a fair target 

 for a stone, a sling or a pea shooter. To the latter many a sparrow, 

 thrush or warbler falls a victim. Two ten-year-old lads in Bridg- 

 hampton, L. I., confessed this autumn that with these rubber pea 

 shooters they had killed during the season fifty robins and other 

 birds which frequent the garden, orchard and cemetery. I can 

 bear abundant testimony to Mr. Allen's statememt. For twenty- 

 seven years I have lived in a large country place filled with trees 

 and birds, which we have protected to the best of our ability from 

 the depredations of cats and small boys. . Whenever I got a chance 

 I removed the cats with a shotgun and accelerated the departure of 

 the bad boy with anything throwable that came handy. This 

 spring I have seen several dead and crippled birds around the 

 place that I know were victims of the deadly pea shooter. A few 

 days ago as I stood unobserved in a cluster of bushes a rock 

 whizzed past my head, thrown at a cat bird by a trespassing young 



