98 What Birds Have Done Wilh Me 



its native forest, as wild or wilder than any of 

 its kind. 



The Apostle Paul's narration of having been 

 scourged, beaten with rods, and made to fight 

 with beasts at Ephesus, tragic history though it 

 be, still does not give him a place among martyrs 

 to be compared to the high perch that the demure 

 and cheerful Robin-Redbreast, that you see on 

 your lawn, of a summer morning, has earned for 

 himself. In very fact, he dies daily as the re- 

 sult of ignorant persecution, Hunnish, ruthless 

 slaughter. 



With the single exception of the remediless 

 slaughter of the Passenger Pigeon, no other fam- 

 ily of birds has suffered what the Robin has and 

 still survives. He is, always excepting the Chick- 

 adee, the optimist of the bird kingdom, jolly under 

 the buffeting of March winds and rollicking 

 through adverse conditions that would justify the 

 grouch of grouches. For unknown ages half the 

 Robin's life has been spent in that part of this 

 country, known since its settlement as the South- 

 ern States and, since the coming of the white man, 

 the birds' Inferno a St. Bartholomew of birds 

 generally speaking, but a veritable slaughter-house 

 for this winter resident in particular. 



It is with shame and humiliation that I append 

 the following indictment against my brother man, 

 and the president of the Grand Jury is no less a 



