178 SMALL ANIMALS AND INSECTS. [Chap. II. 



Around the city there is a difficulty in preserving the birds, because all 

 the groves are infested with an iiboniiiiable nuisance in the shape of big boys 

 and prowling loafers " out for a day's shooting." 



They ought to be out for a day's shooting, and that should be at their own 

 idle carcasses, with fine salt and ]>epi>cr-corns, and every owner of land 

 should be allowed by law thus to salt and pepper any of these idle vagabonds 

 who come upon his grounds without leave to doom the birds to destruction. 



Farmers ! let your motto be— and impress it upon all your family — Never 

 kill a bird! 



In the early settlement of this country, there was such an abundance of 

 birds that the people wiio were striving to raise grain enough for the sujiport 

 of their funiilies, lookeil upon them sis their enemies, because they were nat- 

 urally disposed to come in for a share of the crop, and some of them, such 

 as the crow and the large blackbird, sometimes depredated upon the seed, 

 by which the crop was effectually cut off. 



So a war of extermination was declared without discrimination against all 

 birds, and it was carried to such a bitter end that the children of the first 

 settlers grew up with a fixed opinion that they were doing a Christian duty 

 whenever an opportunity ofiered, in destroying birds and birds' nests, and 

 they entailed the same disposition upon their children and their children's 

 children ; and so the poor birds have been almost exterminated from the face 

 of the earth M'ith scarcely a thought why or wherefore, except that they were 

 birds, and birds must be destroyed — " father says so." Upon that ij^se dixit 

 some of the best friends of the farmer, instead of his worst enemies, have 

 been almost annihilated, while others have come to regard him as a being 

 to be so avoided that they make their abodes in deep forests, and hide their 

 nests aTid young from man as carefully as man would hide his young froni 

 a tiger. 



Experience teacheth wisdom ; and after two hundred years of teaching, 

 the American farmer is just beginning to learn that birds are his best friends. 

 He shot them upon his plum and cheny trees because they took a share of 

 the fruit, and then came the insects that the birds used to prey upon, and the 

 days of plum-growing were over. So of many other insects, real pests of the 

 farmer, everywhere multiplying as the birds decrease. 



Not one of the s])ecies upon which man has made such unceasing war, but 

 has its use. Even the owl, although it will eat chickens, is a great mouse- 

 destroyer ; and the hated hawk is sometimes shot with a snake in its bill. 

 Crows should be treated with as much care about a farm as domestic fowls. 

 Do they pull up your sprouting corn seed ? Feed them and they will not. 

 Sow corn broadcast through the field and they will not touch that which 

 you have planted. Birds of all descriptions should be taught that man is a 

 friend and not an enemy, and they will return the friendship. 



Some lover of birds — and he who is not such is "fit for treasons, strata- 

 gems, and spoils" — ujay demur to our assertion, that they are less influenced 

 by gratitude than their four-footed fellows. If our assertion is incorrect, we 



