Our Garden Friends 



Pearl Beard 

 Washington, D. C. 



'What joy it must be like a living breeze. 



To flutter about 'mid the flowering trees; 



Lightly to soar, and to see beneath 



The wastes of the purple blossoming heath. 



And the yellow furze, like fields of gold. 



That gladdened some fairy region old! 



On the mountain tops, on the billowj' sea. 



On the leafy stems of a forest tree. 



How pleasant the life of a bird must be'" 



The liv^es of the birds are not all joy and song. If they have 

 that appearance, it is because they have learned to do their share 

 in the world's work jo\^ully and happily. For they have a most 

 important work to do. Indeed wise men say that we could not 

 live upon the earth without the birds. They are nature's army 

 and they carry on a constant warfare wath injurious insects, weeds, 

 and destructive rodents. Without them as allies, agriculture could 

 not be carried on successfully, and all vegetation would gradually 

 go to satisfy the terrible appetite of the increasing thousands of 

 rodents and insects. In his tale of "The Birds of Killingworth," 

 Longfellow tells us what happened in a village where the town 

 council were mad enough to order all the birds slain because they 

 fancied they ate a little too much of the crops : 



"The days were like hot coals; the very ground 

 Wasbtirned to ashes; in the orchards fed 

 Myriads of caterpillars, and around 

 The cultivated fields and garden beds 

 Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found 

 No foe to check their march, till they had made 

 The land a desert without leaf or shade." 



The people of Killingworth were glad to acknowledge their error 

 and to import birds into their community from far and near. But 

 their experience did not ser\'e as sufficient warning to others ! In 

 certain of our western states, acts were passed giving bounties on 

 hawks and owls. Not until the grasshoppers had increased so that 

 they threatened to rival the Biblical plague and the field mice had 

 destroyed many a noble orchard and alfalfa crops, did the legisla- 

 tures awake to their folly, and repeal the laws. Then the hawks 

 and owls, the one working by day and the other by night, flew to the 

 rescue, and with the help of the crows the pests quickly disappeared. 



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