148 WILD WINGS 



thing to overturn the balance of nature. Destroy our birds, 

 and very soon we find calamity overtaking our harvests, 

 orchards, lawns, or foliage, costing untold millions of money 

 to the nation. 



If women would not buy these slaughtered remains, with 

 the absurd idea that they are ornamental, men would not 

 shoot the poor things for the millinery market, so that the 

 responsibility for certain sad and irreparable losses must be 

 laid to woman. Otherwise millions of beautiful birds would 

 add charm and interest to what are rapidly becoming well- 

 nigh silent landscapes. Multitudes of children, youth, and 

 adults are studying birds afield, finding pure delight, intellec- 

 tual uplift, cure of care, incentive to outdoor exercise, with 

 consequent gain to health and prolongation of life. Attend- 

 ants and nurses in sanitariums are pursuing courses in bird- 

 study, in order to interest their patients in out-of-door things, 

 to the saving of health and life, in these days of nervous 

 strain. Every woman who wears feathers of harmless or use- 

 ful wild birds is making herself a stumbling-block in the way 

 of all this good, and is, even though thoughtlessly, an abettor 

 in the ultimate destruction of our bird-life, which is certain 

 to come, if the present course is pursued. 



I venture to ask whether the millions of people who to-day 

 love wild nature have no rights which deserve respect, and 

 whether the same sordid spirit which placards the beautiful 

 country, particularly along the railways, with its hateful bill- 

 boards about whiskies, worthless pills, and the like I for 

 one make it a principle to boycott all firms that so advertise 

 is to ride rough-shod over us at the decree of a barbarous 

 fashion that commands us to revert to the scalps and trophies 

 of savagery, even though it devastate and destroy the beauty 

 of God's wonderful world. Theodore Roosevelt has written : 



" Spring would not be spring without bird-songs any more 



