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lives, the neatness and beauty of their 

 dress, the perpetual joy of their songs? 

 Can you imagine a world without birds ? 

 Are the returned warmth and the green 

 vegetation all that make the summer 

 months more pleasant than the winter 

 season? Rob the tropics of their birds 

 and you rob them of their heart. Pasa- 

 dena, California, is a bird paradise, but 

 take away its mocking birds, its orioles, 

 its towhees, its gorgeous humming birds, 

 and the many other birds which enliven 

 every lawn, and you have taken away one 

 of its chief charms. 



But it is not simply that we are enter- 

 tained by the birds, nor even that we are 

 pleased with their neatness and beauty. 



Where their lives touch ours we feel an 

 uplifting influence. We are better fitted 

 for the service which it is our privilege 

 to render to the world by the touch of the 

 bird life. Our horizon is broadened be- 

 yond the self-interest, the egoistic, to the 

 altruistic conception of life. We cannot 

 live in the presence of these creatures so 

 full of life without being spurred to more 

 earnest effort ourselves, ^hen we fail to 

 see in the world of nature about us what 

 it is our privilege to see we are losing that 

 much of life. Let us open our eyes to all 

 the influences that may shape our lives 

 toward best living. 



Lynds Jones. 



TO THE VESPER BIRD. 



Sweet bird of twilight wake in me 

 Bright memories of melody 

 Outpoured from every nesting-tree 



At early morning gray. 

 O sing that I may ponder on 

 The songs away with noontide gone, 

 Ere shadows troop across the lawn 



And voices die away. 

 Long have I waited wistfully ; 

 And lest thy gift unheeded be, 

 Lo, now my gardens are for thee. 



Thou truant all the day ! 



Frank English. 



