8 M onthly B nil etin 



KILLING THE POET'S BIRD 



"A Bird Lover" writes in the London Times (Februciry 25th, 1922) : — 

 "No one can pass a poulterer's shop at present without seeing piles 

 of larks for sale. They are sometimes in boxes, sometimes strung on a 

 string with their throats twisted. In all the stores one meets the same 

 heaps of pathetic little corpses. The Royal Society for the Protection of 

 Birds has never ceased to protest against the slaughter of the loveliest of 

 all our song birds, but the shopmen always return the same answer, that 

 they must sell them because their customers ask for them. The catching 

 of these birds is attended with great cruelty, and there is not even the 

 excuse of killing them for sport, which the gunmen of Monte Carlo advance. 

 The Bird Society has suggested that if people refused to deal at the shops 

 or the departments of stores where the larks are sold the slaughter would 

 stop. But I fear that not one customer in a thousand will take the trouble 

 to make a protest. I therefore venture to write to you to suggest that a bill 

 should be introduced into Parliament forbidding the destruction of larks. 

 This is the English skylark of which Shakespeare wrote: 



"Hark, hark, the lark 

 At heaven's gate sings." 



The bird which later Shelley eulogized in rhapsodic verse, beginning: 



"Hail to thee, blithe spirit, 



Bird than never wert, 



That from heaven or near it 



Pourest thy full heart 



In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." 



Yet in England, to-day, they sell larks in the market-place! Such a 

 state of affairs might be inconceivable to an American, did he not, alas! 

 recall that our federal government still reckons that blithe singer the 

 bobolink a game bird. Let us on both sides of the Atlantic recall in all 

 humility Ralph Hodgson's poem: 



I saw with open eyes 

 Singing birds sweet 

 Sold in the shops 

 For the people to eat. 

 Sold in the shops of 

 Stupidity Street. 



I saw in vision 

 The worm in the wheat. 

 And in the shops nothing 

 For people to eat; 

 Nothing for sale in 

 Stupidity Street. 



