SOME BIRD LORE 59 



** You call them thieves and pillagers; but know 

 They are the winged wardens of your farms, 



Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe, 

 And from your harvests keep a hundred harms; 



Even the blackest of them all, the crow, 

 Renders good service as your man-at-arms. 



Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail. 



And crying havoc on the slug and snail." 



One feels that one can endorse the terse, strong 

 language of Dr. Abbott, the naturalist: ** A creature 

 that will destroy a song-bird's nest is a pest, and 

 whether furred, feathered, four-legged, or a boy, 

 ought to be exterminated." 



It is undoubtedly a fact, and a sad one, that in 

 America the bluebirds have had an extraordinarily 

 hard time; they are among the most confiding and 

 friendly of all the bird tribe, and yet they have been 

 uncompromisingly sought and killed for their gay 

 and beautiful plumage. 



And it seems that the wee humming-birds, whose 

 diminutive size should have secured them from 

 harm, are seen oftener now on wearing apparel 

 than on the flowers. 



Whittier, one of the kindliest natured of men, 

 was constrained to write on this subject: 



" I could almost wish that the shooters of birds, 

 the taxidermists who prepare them, and the 

 fashionable wearers of their plumage, might share 

 the penalty of the Ancient Mariner who shot the 

 albatross." 



Many students in ornithology are exceedingly 

 wasteful of bird life, and the rarer becomes a species 

 the less are the chances that any will escape. Every 

 ambitious collector is anxious for a specimen; it 



