SONG BIRDS AS FOOD 91 



To all lovers of nature, however, these reports show 

 the great importance of protecting our real game birds, 

 mammals, and fish. Private citizens and societies must 

 do all in their power to have game, bird, fish, and forest 

 protection taught in every kind of school in the land. 

 Ten, fifteen years from now, the boys and young men 

 now in the schools will take part in expressing and 

 forming public opinion, and many of them will be mem- 

 bers of state legislatures and some will be in congress. 

 If we win them now, and we can win them, the days of 

 disgraceful, barbarous destruction will have come to an 

 end. Creating a general public sentiment on this sub- 

 ject is the only way of settling this question right. 



In the common schools the subject must receive due 

 attention in connection with nature study, which we 

 must teach in real earnest in every school. In second- 

 ary schools and colleges the professors of botany and 

 zoology must at times wrest themselves away from mi- 

 croscopical cells and abstruse biological problems and 

 not forget entirely the flowers, the trees, the birds and 

 beasts which made this earth interesting and beautiful 

 long before microscope and microtome revealed their 

 minute anatomy. 



