DISCURSIVE. 109 



people, trembles lest doing his full duty may cost him a vote, and who is 

 not seldom apt to fear the resentment of the thieves more than that of 

 honest men. Carl Schurz. 



BLACKEST CRIME OF OUR HISTORY. 



The recent devastation by forest fires in Northern Minnesota, Wisconsin 

 and Michigan, pathetically confirms the wisdom and broad-minded fore- 

 thought of the agitators for forest preservation and restoration, "the for- 

 estry cranks." It is announced that "fire bugs are responsible for the 

 fires," and God is thanked for sending timely rains to extinguish a con- 

 flagration that threatened appalling consequences. The announcement is 

 a lie, and the thanks are sacrilegious. The state is primarily responsible 

 for the fire, working through its petted and pampered favorites. An 

 attempt is made to compute the loss from these fires, in money; it can not 

 be done. The lumber and timber destroyed, the homes made desolate and 

 the farms laid waste are but trifles in the complication, yet they are all 

 that is computed. The young timber that should have been guarded and 

 nursed into maturity for the use of those to come after us, and the soil 

 that would have supported forests for generations of men yet remote, went 

 out in the smoke and flames of those awful fires. Those who can fully 

 appreciate and correctly estimate the real loss consequent upon the de- 

 struction of forests, that we now encourage, are yet unborn. A proper 

 administration of our forests, the enforcement of certain simple regula- 

 tions, the small expense of a given supervision, the utilization of an infin- 

 itesimal percentage of the profits of our forest despoilers would secure 

 ample forests, and cheap and abundant timber for posterity; while under 

 existing conditions treeless wastes of nude and blackened land will be the 

 scroll upon which our children and our children's children will read the 

 record of our indifference, selfishness and greed. Neglect of forests, of 

 their preservation and restoration is one of the blackest crimes of our his- 

 tory. Farm, Stock and Home. 



DESTROYING OUR WARBLERS. 



'" remarkable that in the last quarter of the nineteenth century there 

 should ... ~?h large numbers in the most enlightened countries in 

 whom the savage spirit survives. For shooting wild birds, often maiming 

 and crippling them, inflicting on them the acutest torture, is no less cruel 

 and brutal than cock fighting of Spain, and the bull and other animal con- 

 tests of imperial Rome. In many respects it is much more cruel. Birds 

 have a very highly organized nervous system and must be keenly suscept- 

 ible to pain. Almost everything they do indicates this. Their quick 

 movements, their marvelous serial evolutions, their attachments, their 

 maternal instincts, their evident enjoyment of the beautiful, and the won- 

 derful powers of song that many possess, all attest their high physical 

 organization and prove the greatness of the cruelty that would ruthlessly 

 deprive them of life. The surprise is greater when we reflect that some 

 men of education, and in other respects of high character, indulge in the 

 so-called sport of shooting innocent birds. It may be sport, but is it not 



