10 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



might not commit the mistake of recommendiDg you to love any 

 birds which, as horticulturists and agriculturists, you never could 

 or never ought to love. Study I did, — with a result which can 

 be summed up in two minutes. I thought it little worth w^hile to 

 repeat to you tales of the wonderful reproductive energy of 

 noxious insects — you, who know but too well the sad facts of 

 the case. I deemed it unnecessary to tell you at this late day — 

 what you know very well — that birds were created by a wise 

 Providence to keep this insect host in subjection. You know that 

 the bird-haunted country is more fertile than the birdless country, 

 and you know the punishment that has come to countries which, 

 like France, have allowed their birds to suffer slaughter. You know 

 that our own birds are not protected and encouraged as they 

 should be. I feel certain that you, as students of Nature, are 

 <}onvinced of this. How, then, is it my duty to treat the subject 

 of the hour? Certainly I should show myself unappreciative of 

 my opportunity, did I not, above all, aim so to speak of your 

 friends, the birds, as to stimulate new interest in them — so as to 

 make you resolve that w^e must have more, not fewer, of them. 



Fortunately or unfortunately for my subject this morning, I 

 myself have had absolutely no experience as farmer or gardener, 

 and shall not presume to decide whether or not the crow and the 

 English sparrow must go. That problem is beyond me. I leave 

 it for your Society, at some particularly lucid moment, to settle to 

 your satisfaction. But if in that inspired discussion you should 

 be anxious to find out which side of "the fence" I am on, 

 perhaps I should exclaim with Thoreau : "Bless the Lord, O 

 my soul ! bless Him for wildness ; bless Him for crows that won't 

 alight within gunshot!" Apropos of the English sparrow 

 question, I might suggest that the Almighty created him — though 

 not in America ; this, in all seriousness, for I cannot now consider 

 the English sparrow a joking matter. "Do you think the English 

 sparrow has driven our native birds away ? " is the question a bird 

 student meets everywhere. The questioner thinks affirmatively — 

 that all our birds have been driven away. The fact is, this person 

 never sees or hears birds anyway, and would scarcely know 

 vvhether they went or staid. Perhaps as he came along the sub- 

 urban street this very morning (in May), he passed a rose- 

 breasted grosbeak, an oriole, a yellow warbler, and a red-eyed 



