PLEA FOE THE BIRDS. 159 



ated for the particular benefit of mankind, this may cer- 

 tainly be said of birds. Men in general are not apt to 

 consider how greatly the sum of human happiness is in- 

 creased by certain circumstances of which they 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 vegetation to be deprived 

 of everything but its leaves and fruit. Though we may 

 be accustomed to regard these things as insignificant tri- 

 fles, we are all agreeably 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 wayside in his own coun- 

 try, and how gladly would he confess their influence upon 

 his mind ! 



But there is a great deal of affectation 1 of indifference 

 toward these objects that is not real. Children are 

 delighted with birds and flowers; women, who have in 

 general more culture than men, are no less delighted 

 with them. It is a common weakness of men who are 

 ambitious to seem above everything that pleases women 

 and children to affect to despise the singing of a bird and 

 the beauty of a flower. But even those who affect this 

 indifference are not wholly deaf or blind. They are merely 

 ignorant of the influence upon their own minds of some 

 of the chief sources of our pleasures. 



It is not entirely on account of their -song, their beauty, 

 and their interesting habits, that we set so high a value 

 upon the feathered tribes. They are important in the 



