280 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



toimie (of which I have 100 trees) were ripe and all gone two 

 weeks before I gathered these Seckels for the club. So they 

 could not have been Fondantes. 



Do Birds ever Die ? 



]\Ir. S. M. Peck, South Hadley, writes to the club : " Do birds 

 ever die? They are never found dead in the fields. What 

 becomes of them ? What saj'S the Farmers' Club?" 



Mr. S. Edwards Todd. — "No, birds never die ! The dear little 

 creatures are never permitted to taste the SAveetness of dissolving 

 nature, of which poets have so often sung. The whole career of 

 the feathered songsters of the grove is a complete gauntlet, so 

 thickly beset with brick bats, bullets, arrows and bloodthirsty 

 foes, that even the swift-winged humming bird has never been 

 known to escape unharmed, and to continue to live until the little 

 creature had nothing else to do but to lie down and die. The 

 warbling blue bird, striving to cheer our hearts with his song, is 

 always a target for every mean boy that can throw a stone, so that 

 not a place in all our boasted land of liberty marks the spot where 

 this beautiful bird has gone to rest in peace. The joyous bobo- 

 link never dies ; for, before the delightful cadence of its cheerful 

 song has echoed from the meadows, sweet with new mown hay, to 

 the fields of golden grain, some f tal missile lays the songster low. 

 Even the little " chippie," that cheers the plowman with its heaven 

 born music, and gathers noxious insects all the day, is popped over, 

 its little nest ruthlessly destroyed, and the young ones fall a prey 

 to kites and hawks by day, and to a long category of nocturnal 

 marauders. It seems as if the lark, shrill-voiced and loud, bright 

 messenger of the morning ; the Baltimore oriole, w'ith its melli- 

 fluous notes ; " sweet little bob," and scores of other harmless 

 birds that are the farmer's and gardener's best friends, might be 

 allowed to live and die in peace. But they never have been 

 allowed to die ! And even the eagle, proud emblem of our boasted 

 republic, the very sight of which ought to inspire every philan- 

 thropist and every American heart with a laudable patriotism, is 

 cot permitted to die in peace ! Perched on a silvery cloud, or 

 floating on l)road expanded wings over the abyss below, while 

 apparently measuring the ample range beneath, heeding not the 

 death that threatens him, from the cruel sportsman, who instinc- 

 tively cocks his rifle that never misses the mark, the noble eagle, 

 glory of our nation, is shot down, as if odious treason and rapine 



