300 An American Fruit-Farm 



Listen to our wise friend Professor Bailey: 



The mulberry, of almost any variety, will thrive almost 

 anywhere in America, though you better select your variety 

 for your special locality. Try the " New American, " called 

 also the ''Downing." Plant mulberry trees and you will 

 have birds and birds and birds, and your orchards and 

 gardens will not be molested — at least by birds. Indeed, 

 you may have cause to wish that the birds would eat worms 

 and let mulberries alone. Mulberries fruit with cherries 

 and strawberries and raspberries and early fruits generally. 



For untold ages the inhabitants of Italy, and 

 of the shores of the Mediterranean generally, have 

 slaughtered birds without discrimination. And 

 this wanton destruction of all bird-life is charac- 

 teristic of Southern Europe. Anything that wears 

 feathers and flies is game and food to the Italians 

 in Italy and to all the inhabitants of that vast 

 area once the Roman Empire. No habit is more 

 deeply ingrained in the Italian than that of slaugh- 

 tering birds of any kind. They come to America 

 with very loose, if not fantastical, notions of 

 ''liberty, " — ^that most abused word of otir age and 

 country, — and here they immediately proceed to 

 kill every bird in sight. Few Americans have any 

 conception of the bird slaughter wrought by 

 Italians in their own land and by them in this land 

 of their adoption. They seem like savages thirsting 

 for blood. To them the right to kill birds seems as 

 unquestionable as the right to express an opinion 

 about the weather. 



Nattire made the Italian peninsula a paradise 



