How to Attract the Birds 



and love of nature, the most spirituahzing of 11 his 

 lessons, formed part of the American child's edu- 

 cation. 



One of our greatest religious thinkers has recently 

 set himself the task of getting acquainted with the 

 trees, birds and wild flowers around his summer 

 home. "When I was a boy," he says, half apolo- 

 getically, "we never noticed these things. The 

 good people fixed their thoughts so steadfastly on 

 the next world, they quite overlooked this. We left 

 nature unread then, thinking that everything worth 

 knowine: had to be studied out of lesson books. 

 And the idea of knowledge that obtained in a New 

 England academy was almost medieval. It bore 

 almost no relation to the people's daily lives. Where 

 nearly the entire population earned a living from the 

 soil, absolutely nothing was done toward making the 

 people understand it and love it. Is it any wonder 

 that farming meant failure so often and that the 

 ambitious young people rushed madly toward the 

 cities? We are only just learning to enjoy nature, 

 to open our blind eyes and see the world around 

 us, to stop destroying and preserve the beneficent 

 gifts lavished upon us, to utilize them intelligently, 

 which is to agree with our Creator that His creation 

 is good." 



A NEW THING UNDER THE SUN 



In the quite sudden popular interest in nature 

 recently manifest, birds have come in for, perhaps, 

 the lion's share of attention. Unlike most move- 

 ments, this is an absolutely new one in the history of 



i66 



