THE BIRDS OF NEW JERSEY. 9 



Washington, D. 0., April 23, 1894. 

 Mr. C. a. Babcock, 



Superintendent of Schools, Oil City, Pa. 



Dear Sir: Your proposition to establish a "Bird Day" 

 on the same general plan as ' ' Arbor Day " has my cordial 

 approval. 



Such a movement can hardly fail to promote the de- 

 velopment of a healthy public sentiment toward our na- 

 tive birds, favoring their preservation and increase. If 

 directed toward this end, and not to the encouragement of 

 the importation of foreign species, it is sure to meet the 

 approval of the American people. 



It is a melancholy fact that among the enemies of our 

 birds two of the most destructive and relentless are our 

 women and our boys. The love of feather ornamentation 

 so heartlessly persisted in by thousands of women, and 

 the mania for collecting eggs and killing birds so deeply 

 rooted in our boys, are legacies of barbarism inherited 

 from our savage ancestry. The number of beautiful and 

 useful birds annually slaughtered for bonnet trimmings 

 runs up into the hundreds of thousands and threatens, if 

 it has not already accomplished, the extermination of 

 some of the rarer species. The insidious egg-hunting and 

 pea-shooting proclivities of the small boy are hardly less 

 widespread and destructive. It matters little which of 

 the two agencies is the more fatal since neither is productive 

 of any good. One looks to the gratification of a shallow 

 vanity, the other to the gratification of a cruel instinct 

 and an expenditure of boyish energy that might be prof- 

 itably diverted into other channels. The evil is one 

 against which legislation can be only palliative and of 

 local efficiency. Public sentiment, on the other hand, if 

 properly fostered in the schools, would gain force with 

 the growth and development of our boys and girls and 

 would become a hundredfold more potent than any law 

 enacted by the State or Congress. I believe such a senti- 

 ment can be developed, so strong and so universal, that a 

 respectable woman will be ashamed to be seen with the 

 wing of a wild bird on her bonnet, and an honest boy 

 will be ashamed to own that he ever robbed a nest or 

 wantonly took the life of a bird . 



Birds are of inestimable value to mankind. With- 

 out their unremitting services our gardens and fields would 



