108 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



the pleasure of the chase. As soon as a boy is able to 

 shoulder a gun, he goes out day after day, and year 

 after year, in his warfare of extermination against the 

 feathered race. He spares the birds at no season and 

 in no situation. While thus employed, he is encour- 

 aged by older persons, as if he were ridding the earth of 

 a pest. Thus do men promote the destruction of one 

 of the blessed gifts of nature. 



If there be proof that any race of animals was 

 created for the particular benefit of mankind, this may 

 certainly be said of birds. Men in general are not apt 

 to consider how greatly the sum of human happiness is 

 increased by certain circumstances of which we take 

 but little note. There are not many who are in the 

 habit of going out of their way, or pausing often from 

 their labors, to hear the song of a bird,, or to examine the 

 beauty of a flower. Yet the most indifferent would 

 soon experience a painful emotion of solitude, were the 

 feathered race to be suddenly annihilated, or were veg- 

 etation to be deprived of every thing but its leaves and 

 fruit. Though we may be accustomed to regard these 

 things as insignificant trifles, we are all pleasingly 

 affected by them. Let him who thinks he despises a 

 bird or a flower, be suddenly cast ashore upon some 

 desert island, and after a lonely residence there for a 

 season, let one of our familiar birds greet him with a 

 few of its old accustomed notes, or a little flower peep 

 out upon him, with the same look which has often 

 greeted him by the way-side in his own country, and 

 how gladly would he confess their influence upon his 

 mind ! 



But there is a great deal of affectation of indifl'erence 

 towards these objects, which is not real. Children are 

 delighted with birds and flowers ; — women, who have 



