XL INTRODUCTION. 
A AN ee A A Fe ae 
came to my farm one day, and in the absence of the tenant,.tried to get into a bird 
house, elevated upon a stout oak pole. The little house was occupied by Purple 
Martins, which had returned to us year after year, and had never been subjected to 
such rude molestation before. .. . 
“Every influence touching the bird seems to run in the way of destruction, and 
not a single one works for their preservation. Our sporting papers urge ‘game clubs’ 
to enforce the laws, not to conserve the supply of food and keep up the proper balance 
of nature, but to increase the delights of sportsmen; and their advertising columns 
fairly bristle with announcements of new and improved means of killing things. 
“We all know that the average man or boy who wastes his time in carrying 
around a gun when he had much better be at work for wages, will shoot small birds 
when he can’t find larger ones upon which to visit his murderous propensities. Almost 
every Sunday I hear the report.of guns in the woods near my house. There is usually 
next to nothing in the way of real game, and I know that many of these scamps are 
blazing away at the small birds, for I have seen them doing it. Many of our great 
naturalists, who certainly should be as humane as they are learned and wise, speak of 
shooting hundreds of the small birds as indifferently as though they were considering 
the fate of so many gnats or flies. There is one noble exception which should be remem- 
bered, and I think it wlll be, for his is ‘one of the few, the immortal names that were 
not born to die.’ I refer to Henry David Thoreau, the poet naturalist of New England, 
whose ever-enduring fame is permeating every land in which our language is read or 
spoken. His biographers tell us that he never used a gun—never killed a bird. He 
made the studies of bird-life upon which his undying writings are based, with his glass, 
where the object was not near enough to be seen by the unaided eye. When he lived 
alone in the woods, at Walden Pond, where he wrote his greatest and most delightful 
book, the birds were his very intimate friends. Some of them became so tame, and so 
accustomed to his presence, that ‘the legend says’ they would even alight upon his hat. 
What a lesson of true kindness, gentleness and appreciative tenderness is taught by this 
simple statement! It may be necessary and very legitimate and proper for our great 
naturalists to slaughter vast numbers of birds, for the purpose of illustration and com- 
parison, and to fill up the museums; but they need not tell of these exploits in a way to 
inspire and encourage a love of slaughter in the minds of the rising generation. Young 
America is ‘fast’ enough in that direction without the stimulus of such examples. . 
“Destructive insects prey upon our fruits, vegetables, and field crops, and every 
little while we hear of the advent or ‘invention’ of some new pest. And yet with a 
criminal indifference that will astound future generations, we are allowing our birds— 
the only resource nature has provided for our protection—to be malay and most 
wantonly swept from the face of the earth. 
“For my own part I have labored twenty-five years in defense of the birds, but 
with results far from satisfactory. I can and do protect them on my own farm, and I 
drafted and by hard work secured the passage of the provision for their protection and 
preservation in our code; but I do not know that I have ever accomplished a sub- 
stantial thing. Public sentiment is against me—at least, people are totally indifferent 
ou the subject.”’ 
