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The Audubon Note Book. 



but what could Lucy know about feeding young owls ? 

 If the mother bird had fed the young one herself at 

 night, Lucy would be none the wiser, but by putting 

 the dead mouse and small birds down outside the 

 coop she gave Lucy full instruction in her duties. 

 Let us hope she did not get small birds for it, but 

 that she kept the trap constantly set and provided the 

 owlet with an abundance of good fat mice. 



SMASHED BIRDS. 



The following extracts from a paper by Mrs. H. 

 R. Haweis recently printed in the London magazine 

 Belgravia, will be sure to interest all members of the 

 Audubon Society: 



A corpse is never a really pleasant ornament; 

 most people with a real feeling for beauty will agree 

 with me. Holbein painted one with terrible truth to 

 nature. Other old masters, equally great, painted 

 many corpses, but they were all painted with a motive 

 — to startle, not to tickle, the pulses. All the ideas 

 awakened by such an image are chamelle, not joyous; 

 and the primary object of all decorations is to give 

 joy and pleasure, to appeal through the eye to the 

 happiest emotions, which a corpse does not do — even 

 when it has glass eyes. * * * 



When I was in America two years ago, in many 

 ways the pleasantest tour I ever made, I found a 

 fashion rife which had not yet submerged England, 

 the fashion of wearing huge birds, mostly in a rather 

 smashed state, on the head gear. When I went into 

 a car of a morning, I could not help immediately 

 counting half a dozen smashed birds; I changed to a 

 second, nine smashed birds met my gaze; went into 

 a third, sixteen smashed birds. Along the street 

 every other woman had a smashed bird on her head, 

 every bonnet shop was full, and at Boston, where, 

 the weather being rainy, black waterproofs were com- 

 monly worn by all classes, this gay-colored smashed 

 bird peering from the macintosh hood, ever and aye, 

 struck me as quite comic. I have seen a gray parrot 

 put to this use, and I constantly saw gulls towering 

 two feet from the face. * * » 



Since then the disease has reached England. We 

 too spatchcock on us, back or front, monstrosities 

 which set some of us wondering whether they are 

 most heartless or most hideous. The raggedest girl 

 can clap a smashed bird on her smashed bonnet, and 

 she does it. If she cannot afford to buy one, she 

 can trap a young sparrow, tread on it, and pin it to 

 her unkempt head. The richest leader of fashion is 

 radical enough to keep her in countenance, for in 

 England equality of women is a furor; and there no 

 longer exists the prejudice that "what everybody 

 does" is "vulgar ' — indeed, vulgarity is a cult in 

 more ways than one, by reaction. From America 

 comes our levelling tendency, from America our 

 smashed bird. Let us take from America now the 

 example set by her most cultivated ranks, and dis- 

 courage the indiscriminate slaughter of creatures so 

 useful and beautiful in their proper places, in order 

 to put them to an unnatural use in pursuit of — it 

 sounds ironical to say beauty and joy — so we must 

 say ugliness and pain. America's Audubon Society 

 did not actually precede our Selborne Society; but it 

 is fifty times as active, and therefore fifty times as 

 useful. 



Now, the reason I did not like these smashed birds 

 was (i) because I am acquainted with live birds, 

 and the agonized attitudes vexed my ej'e. The poor 

 impaled beasts seemed to cry aloud from the hat, 

 "Help me! I am in torture." They seldom had 

 their limbs in the right places; generally the head 

 down, one wing up, the other — well, occasionally on 

 the contrary side of a bow — and the legs splayed out 

 like horns. Miserable it was to an art student. (2.) 

 A big bird, even when properly placed, legs below, 

 head up, and a wild hilarity in its eye, is a consider- 

 able weight, and such a burden is out of place at the 

 edge or front of a hat. A living bird could not stand 

 there; the head could not bear the weight. A live 

 pigeon weighs one pound, a gull from two and one 

 quarter to five pounds, and therefore its being there 

 in effigy contradicted the canons of good taste. 



Visiting North Devonshire not long ago, Lee and 

 Morthoe, I noticed that never a bird's song struck 

 the ear; one never saw a bird. I was told the wise 

 and intelligent natives had long waged war on small 

 birds; and what was the result? Why, that hardly 

 a single walk could be taken in the woods for the 

 mass of slugs that lay all over the rich grass every- 

 where, sometimes in uncounted numbers, only four 

 or five feet apart — slugs so huge that they reminded 

 one of snakes, only that a snake is less disgusting, 

 and has better manners; at least it will politely re- 

 move itself when it sees you coming. The brutal 

 slug is like the slimy lounger, heavy with drink or 

 selfishness, who will bar your way without apology, 

 when there is no road but past a public house. 



Pretty Lee was a purgatory to me thus ; which 

 ever green glade I sought to penetrate, Fafner 

 barred my progress, and stretched and yawned in 

 his vile content at being too horrible to crush. Why 

 were these disgraceful slugs fattening all over De- 

 von ? Because the birds were writhing on hats or 

 hanging in tatters on barn doors. And snails, ear- 

 wigs, all the grubs and beetles one can think of 

 avenged the birds on the farmers' crops and the 

 gentry's pleasaunces. The "caterpillars innumer- 

 able" eat more than the birds did. In vain the 

 indignant farmer's wail! God is "on the side of the 

 big battalions," even when the army is of slugs, 

 and it is of no use praying for good harvests while 

 we make them impossible. Much of the failure of 

 crops and the fall in the value of land and home 

 produce is directly traceable to our interference with 

 the proper balance of nature in her creatures. 



However, were the fashion of wearing mangled 

 birds and beasts on the head really pretty and pleas- 

 ant to the educated eye, no consideration for farmer 

 or innocent pedestrian could be expected to touch 

 the thoughtless votaries of la mode. Still less can 

 they be touched on the sentimental side — have not 

 some leathern girls danced at balls with a trimming 

 of robin redbreasts on their half-clad forms? — and 

 questions of cruelty are certainly best discussed dis- 

 tinct from questions of beauty. I have never been 

 unphilosophic enough to argue the question of dress 

 from the moral side, though I may nurse a private 

 opinion that a moral side exists and has a most deep 

 influence, because dress is an index to character. 

 And it is only because so many pretty faces on both 

 sides the Atlantic have been spoilt by this smashed- 

 bird excrescence of sick fancy, that I venture to al- 

 lude to the farmer as above, who deserves scant 

 pity, no doubt, while himself remains the worst 

 naturalist. 



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