284 An American Fruit-Farm 



instructing their listeners, young or old, in the 

 value of bird life to mankind? Or is *' slumming*' 

 more interesting? Or ''politics'*? Or a course in 

 sociology or the ''higher criticism"? Or "the 

 missions on the Congo"? Palestine is a birdless 

 country; it is mostly a wilderness. Why a wilder- 

 ness? Clergymen are public teachers of immeasur- 

 able influence. Are they "with us or against us" 

 in the sane attempt to give the birds a chance? 

 There is one text in the Bible from which if the 

 preacher does not at once preach he may never 

 again have the opportunity, because the text will 

 no longer be true.' 



Sometimes, when clerks break loose from banks, 

 stores, and other places, they become "pothunters." 

 They want to shoot everything in sight, in the 

 bird line, on holidays: robins, thrushes, martins, 

 wrens, woodpeckers, pigeons, owls — and so on 

 through the list. Why not? Who owns the birds? 

 Who objects? Shoot the robin and throw the 

 carcass under the bushes! Only a few hundred 

 million more bugs to eat up food crops; that is all 

 that shooting a robin means. Query: Do clerks 

 eat wrens, martins, field-sparrows, robins? 



During the winter of 1911-1912, the "city 

 council of Pittsboro, South Carolina, rescinded an 

 order forbidding shooting within the city limits so 

 that the people might shoot robins that had been 

 driven by a severe storm into the town to seek 

 food and shelter. About four thousand robins were 



* Song of Solomon, ii., 12. 



