PHASES OF BIRD, LIFE, 213 
sport. More senseless and wicked still was the fash- 
ion in vogue a few years ago, perhaps not yet quite 
obsolete, which compelled the massacre of thousands 
of bright-hued birds for feminine —I should say 
unfeminine — adornment. To say nothing of the 
“‘loudness’’ and bad taste of such a fashion, it is 
extremely unwise to put birds to death, for no one 
can compute the number of injurious insects they 
annually devour. A bird on the bonnet means so 
much less bread on the table. A bird in the orchard 
is a sort of scavenger and pomologist combined, and 
does his share in giving you a dish of fruit for dinner. 
The scarlet tanager looks like a living ruby in a 
green tree; but—JI speak bluntly — it looks like a 
chunk of gore on a woman’s bonnet. In behalf of 
good taste and the birds, I enter my protest against 
this barbaric custom. 
True, birds have elements of the Adamic nature 
in them. Many of them do relish forbidden fruit, 
and must be driven off, lest they rifle your cherry- 
tree ; but it is seldom necessary to kill them, even 
then, especially those that live wholly on insects and 
fruit. 
A correspondent once sent me a number of 
queries. How do birds come to their “last end” ? 
Do none of them die natural deaths? If they do, 
why do we never, or at least very rarely, find dead 
or dying birds in the fields and woods? My re- 
sponse to these questions is: Very few birds die 
natural deaths, — that is, merely of sickness or old 
age, —though a few of them may. When a bird 
