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FARM AND SCHOOL PROBLEMS. 



The Study of Birds. 



As a class birds are one of the most interesting divisions of 

 the animal kingdom, for the student of zoology. 



They serve certain well defined purposes which may be 

 briefly stated as follows : 



1. Destruction of insect pests. 



2. Consumption of noxious weed seeds. 



3. Distribution of plants. 

 4.. Food value. 



5. Objects of beauty and song. 



How to Love Birds. 



A BORN BIRD-LOVER. 



The birds have always meant much to me. As a farm boy they were 

 like a golden thread that knit the seasons together. In early manhood I 



turned to them with the fondness 

 of youth, re-enforced with an im- 

 petus obtained from literature. 

 Books, especially the poets, may 

 do this fot a man. They may 

 consecrate a subject, give it the 

 atmosphere of the ideal and lift 

 it up in the field of universal in- 

 terest. They seem to have done 

 something like that for me in re- 

 lation to birds. I did not go to 

 books for my knowledge of the 

 birds, except for some technical 

 knowledge, but I think literature 

 helped to endow them with a 

 human interest to me and relate 

 them to the deeper and purer 

 currents of my life. What joy 

 they have brought me! How 

 they have given me wings to 

 escape the tedious and the dead- 

 ening ! I have not studied them 



FIG. 1. 



A Pair of Red-Winged 

 Blackbirds. 



so much as I have loved them ; 



at least, my studies have been in- 

 spired by love. 



How much easier and surer knowledge comes through sympathy than 

 through the mre knowing faculties ! It seems as if I had imbibed my 



