The Audubon HSocteties 
SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 
Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 
Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, National 
Association of Audubon Societies, 141 Broadway, New York City 
A LITTLE CHRISTMAS SERMON FOR TEACHERS 
T has been the habit of recent years, when we wish to hold the attention 
of the farmer, or any one else who seems particularly keen about the- 
material side of life, to plead for the bird from the side of its economic- 
value. Of course, this side of the question is very important, as fixing the- 
status of the bird as a citizen and a laborer in the republic, who is worthy of 
his hire, and, therefore, has a right to protection and a living. 
It seems to me, however, that there is such a thing as pushing the economic 
side of the question too far; or perhaps it is better to say, sometimes in the- 
wrong quarter and at the wrong season. 
This is undoubtedly an age of marvelous material progress, but of inade-- 
quate intellectual and spiritual development. Should we not then boldly and_ 
without qualification plead for the birds through their ethical qualities of song: 
and beauty? For is not beauty the visible form of the spiritual? 
Not long ago, I was trying to convince a farmer, sufficiently of the new~ 
school to have many of the modern appliances of his craft, on the necessity 
of leaving nesting-places for birds in bushes, about his fences, and in odd 
corners; of the wisdom of reducing the number of barn-cats, putting out food 
in winter, and leaving a few shocks of buckwheat for the chance game birds. 
that might stray up from the brush lots. 
I was growing quite pleased with my own eloquence when a peculiar smile - 
on my listener’s face brought me to an abrupt stop. At first, I thought the- 
man wished to ask a question, and then I read the curve of the eyebrows and . 
twitching of the lip corners to mean an amused tolerance that quite quenched . 
my ardor. 
“Of course there’s truth in what you say,” he mused, “and government . 
facts behind it; and yet no facts lie so loud as some of these same ones about . 
birds. I don’t allow shooting or nest-hunting on the farm, and never did before - 
there was a law about it, so there are plenty of birds. All the same, if I just 
stood by and waited for them to do my chores of potato-bug picking, and _ 
hunting cutworms and spraying for currant and canker worms, and tree- 
blight, I should be standing barefoot instead of in a good pair of boots. 
“Tt isn’t all because there are less birds, that the crops are bug-pestered to - 
death; it’s partly because more stuff is grown, and there is more cleared land - 
and more disease and blight, as the soil gets old. 
(253) 
