30 OUR NATIVE BIRDS 
Let us have bird islands wherever conditions make it 
possible ! 
Almost every farmer and land owner possesses small 
areas which cannot be utilized for agricultural purposes. 
Plant these waste places with shrubs, trees, and vines 
suitable to the locality. Summer birds will nest in 
these isolated woods, and migrants and winter residents 
will gladly resort to them for food and protection. I 
have known a large flock of quails to make their home 
in a copse of small trees, shrubs, and dead flower stalks 
and grasses. This natural shelter extended a few 
hundred yards along a meandering prairie stream in 
Minnesota. The quails could not be driven out of it. 
If you want a place where your boy may hunt rabbits, 
he will find them in such waste-land shelter. 
Rural Schools and Nature. —If the windows and doors 
of many country schoolhouses did not so much suggest 
the structure in which the worthy Ichabod Crane offici- 
ated, a stranger would undoubtedly mistake these cor- 
ner shanties for township jails or some kind of penal 
sheds or almshouses. The dilapidated appearance of the 
jail and its desolate surroundings he might interpret as 
intended to accentuate the punishment of the culprit or 
to symbolize the lack of beauty and harmony in his 
mind and morals. I cannot imagine that, without see- 
ing the children, the teacher, or the school furniture, he 
could possibly hit upon the idea that these are the 
places where wealthy, intelligent, and practical com- 
munities compel their children to spend one-fifth of the 
waking hours of their youth, and that they would 
