SONG BIRDS AS FOOD 91 
To all lovers of nature, however, these reports show 
the great importance of protecting our real game birds, 
mammals, and fish. Private citizens and societies must 
do all in their power to have game, bird, fish, and forest 
protection taught in every kind of school in the land. 
Ten, fifteen years from now, the boys and young men 
now in the schools will take part in expressing and 
forming public opinion, and many of them will be mem- 
bers of state legislatures and some will be in congress. 
If we win them now, and we can win them, the days of 
disgraceful, barbarous destruction will have come to an 
end. Creating a general public sentiment on this sub- 
ject is the only way of settling this question right. 
In the common schools the subject must receive due 
attention in connection with nature study, which we 
must teach in real earnest in every school. In second- 
ary schools and colleges the professors of botany and 
zoology must at times wrest themselves away from mi- 
croscopical cells and abstruse biological problems and 
not forget entirely the flowers, the trees, the birds and 
beasts which made this earth interesting and beautiful 
long before microscope and microtome revealed their 
minute anatomy. 
