A PLEA FOR THE UNPROTECTED 



left far behind with their noise and bustle 

 on foaming rapids among the hills, and 

 crawls now in lazy ease through wide in- 

 tervales, under elms and water maples 

 and thickets of willows. 



On the uplands, where the meadow 

 lark starts out of the grass with a 

 sharp, defiant "zeet!" and speeds away 

 on his steady game-like flight, remem- 

 ber before you stop it, or try to, of how 

 little account he is when brought to 

 bag ; and how when the weary days of 

 winter had passed, his cheery voice wel- 

 comed the coming spring, a little later 

 than the robin's, a little earlier than 

 the flicker's cackle ; and what an enliv- 

 ening dot of color his yellow breast 

 made where he strutted in the dun, bare 

 meadows. 



In some States the woodpeckers are 

 unprotected and are a mark for every 

 gunner. Their galloping flight tempts 

 the ambitious young shooter to try his 

 skill, but they are among the best friends 

 of the arboriculturist and the fruit- 

 grower, for though some of them steal 

 cherries and peck early apples, and one 

 species sucks the sap of trees, they are 



