294 An American Fruit-Farm 



birds — ^in otir country alone — ^the Labrador duck, 

 the Eskimo curlew, three species of the macaw, 

 and the Carolina parakeet. And our common birds 

 — ^robins, orioles, sparrows (not the English spar- 

 row, that insufferable scavenger, but otu* native 

 species), bluebirds, martins, chickadees, turtle- 

 doves, owls, night-hawks — are rapidly perishing by 

 indiscriminate and senseless slaughter. 



Ten cents a dozen for robins seems a fabulous 

 price to the thoughtless Tennessee mountain boy, 

 and to kill thousands of robins in Georgia, Ala- 

 bama, and the Border States, generally, while the 

 birds are migrating, means a birdless tract to 

 the North. The robin, or, properly speaking, the 

 thrush, is only a type of the victims. After the 

 entire South has spent months in destroying useful 

 birds, the entire North takes up the work of 

 slaughter and continues it till the last escaping 

 bird takes its flight southward into the camp of its 

 enemies. The miracle is that a single bird survives. 



A twelve per cent, profit from birds means a 

 common-sense treatment of them everywhere and 

 at all times. Foolish, selfish, miu-derous man is 

 blind to his dependence upon birds for his existence. 

 Every species he kills to extinction only marks his 

 progress toward starvation, for he is hastening the 

 day when the world will be uninhabitable for man. 

 The oceans have northward and southward cur- 

 rents, polar and equatorial currents, vast rivers in 

 the sea which, starting from the equator, flow 

 northward and make the temperate zone inhabit- 



