228 What Birds Have Done With Me 



lish Sparrow might soon be allowed to take out 

 his first papers. 



No one thing would result in so great a saving 

 of bird life as the passage of a law making the 

 air-gun, like "a bird-cannon," a thing contraband, 

 as detrimental, enormously destructive to forms 

 of life, essential to the very continuance of vege- 

 tation on the planet. The Federal Agricultural 

 Department, having the enforcement of the 

 Migratory Bird Law should stop the manufactory 

 and sale of the harmless little air-gun, that like 

 a dumb watch a little later on is sure to be changed 

 to a live one. With no air-gun in the hands of 

 the callow youngster, and no license to hunt till a 

 boy has attained legal manhood, a mob 

 is transformed into a drilled army. Can any- 

 thing be more unwise than to make sportsmen 

 out of the rising generation, and then hire War- 

 dens to stay the killing of useful birds? Certain 

 evils are best controlled as near as possible to the 

 fountain head. 



The church and the school and the home must 

 be made active in the cultivation of a superhuman 

 soul against killing. Why prattle about the cul- 

 tivation of human education? Education is always 

 on the side of the killer; it's a wilderness where 

 flesh-pots are the things most to be desired. 

 "Thou shalt not kill" must some way be put into 

 the super-soul of mankind, a new religion in which 



