The Rice Bird. 



235 



tain side. Think of poor mamma or Mrs. 

 Campbell if Will or I had been brought 

 home dead. 



With a great lump rising in my throat I 

 tried to dig some worms for the remaining 

 bird. I found a few, but he refused to eat 

 them. So with a heavy heart I picked up 

 the handkerchief and started out to look 

 for the nest, leaving Will still sleeping. I 

 found it, hardly a mile away, so I climbed 

 up and dropped the live birdie into the 

 nest, and the dead one I wrapped up in the 

 handkerchief again, and buried it tenderly 

 at the foot of the tree. Then I turned to 

 come away with a lighter heart. 



Just as I did so the sun came up over the 

 hills, and there burst from the forest the 

 most beautiful music I had ever heard. At 

 first it was low and sad, as though the birds 

 were singing a requiem over the grave of 



the little thrush, then more voices joined 

 it, until it became a glorious chant, which 

 followed me all the way back to where Will 

 was sleeping. 



As soon as he woke we started for the 

 river, for we did not intend to miss the 

 boat this time. It was a slow, painful 

 journey, for we were both so stiff and sore 

 we could hardly walk. But we got there 

 in time, and my! weren't we glad to step 

 on to the other shore. 



We found out afterward that Charley had 

 come over in the boat the evening before 

 and had sent a search party over to the 

 mountain to look for us, but as we had 

 started to walk up the river, we did not 

 hear them hallooing for us. 



And so ends the story of my first and last 

 robbery of a bird's nest. 



E. B. Barry. 



THE RICE BIRD, 



A CENTURY or more ago, the people 

 of the Southern States took up 

 arms against the rice bird; genuine fire- 

 arms, too, charged with gunpowder, of 

 which they have exploded so enormous a 

 quantity, that the very atmosphere ought to 

 be reeking with the smoke of " villainous 

 saltpetre " and tremulous with the reverb- 

 erations of incessant fusilades. 



At seed time, when the birds are winging 

 their way northward, and again a few weeks 

 before harvest, when the young birds are 

 making their first flight to the southern 

 paradise, the air is rent with the din of fire- 

 arms from gray dawn till eventide; hun- 

 dreds of thousands of birds, if not millions, 

 are shot annually, and it may be some sort 

 of satisfaction to the planter to inflict ruth- 

 less justice on the predatory foe, but in so 

 far as concerns the economic results of the 

 crusade, it is beyond all dispute that the 

 rice birds thrive on powder and shot, and 



were never more numerous than at present. 

 There is nothing anomalous in this; the 

 rice bird is one of our native birds, capable 

 of holding his own in the struggle for exist- 

 ence, he is consequently constantly trench- 

 ing on the limits of his food supply both 

 North and South, and all the shooting of 

 the planters has no other effect than to save 

 them from the wholesale destruction that 

 must inevitably result from exceeding those 

 limits. The most energetic shooting has 

 no other effect than to maintain some ap- 

 proach to uniformity in numbers, and if the 

 planter would take into consideration the 

 amount of damage sustained by trampling 

 down the rice in the pursuit of the foe, he 

 would find it more profitable to submit to 

 their depredations, relying on the facts that 

 rice culture will spread, but the rice birds 

 can never increase beyond the limits of 

 their food supply in that season in which it 

 is scarcest. 



