212 IN BIRD LAND. 
by a kite-string that swung in a loop from the roof 
of my house, —a case of involuntary suicide. A 
nuthatch that I saw one day in the woods had its 
leg broken, and I could not help thinking of its 
lingering agony before it would starve to death. A 
pet nonpareil, a dear, bright-hued little fellow, was 
well and happy one evening; but the next morn- 
ing he lay dead on the bottom of the cage, perhaps 
the victim of a convulsion. Another pet nonpareil 
was not in good health ; so I thought a bath in tepid 
water might be good for him; but alas! the ablu- 
tion proved too much for the little invalid, which, in 
spite of our utmost efforts to save his life, succumbed 
to the inevitable. A like fate befell a young turtle- 
dove which a neighbor found in the woods and 
brought me for a gift. 
But the cause of a great deal of mortality among 
birds is man’s inhumanity to them. ‘The thirst for 
blood seems to be inherent in many coarse natures, 
and as killing a fellow-man is illegal and almost sure 
to be summarily punished, many men gratify their 
greed for gore by slaying innocent birds and 
animals. 
“ Butchers and villains, bloody cannibals! 
How sweet a plant have you untimely cropped! 
You have no children, butchers! if you had, 
The thought of them would have stirred up remorse.” 
The small boy with a sling or a spring-gun or an 
air-rifle is a source of much grief to the birds. He 
even kills the tiny kinglets that flit to and fro in the 
trees bordering our streets, and seems to think it 
