VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 37 
Birds often have inspired the poets. Bryant's lines “ To 
a Water-fowl,” and Shelley’s “Skylark,” each exhibit a phase 
of such inspiration. These are but instances of the stimu- 
lating power exerted on the mind of man by the bird and 
its associations. Some of the grandest poems ever written 
have been dependent on their authors’ observation of birds 
‘for some touch of nature which has helped to render them 
immortal. Thus Gray, in his famed “Elegy written in a 
Country Churchyard” : — 
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
The Swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, 
The Cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 
Who, reared in a country home, can fail, as he reads 
these lines, to recall the twittering of the Swallows under 
the spreading rafters in the cool of early morning? The 
mental contemplation of that peaceful pastoral scene, the 
train of tender recollections of the time of youth and inno- 
cence, all tending toward better impulses and higher aspira- 
tions, are largely due to the mention of the familiar bird in 
its association with the home of childhood. Is not literature 
the richer for the following lines of Longfellow in his “ Birds 
of Passage”? 
Above, in the light 
Of the star-lit night, 
Swift birds of passage wing their flight 
Through the dewy atmosphere. 
I hear the beat 
Of their pinions fleet, 
As from the land of snow and sleet 
They seek a southern lea. 
How much of life and color the presence of birds adds to 
the landscape! ‘The artist appreciates this. What marine 
view is complete without its Gulls in flight? How much a 
flock of wild-fowl adds to a lake or river scene! 
Birds are a special boon to child life, and a never-ending 
source of entertainment to many children who live upon 
isolated farms, where the observation of birds’ habits adds 
greatly to the rational enjoyment of existence. 
It is not a far cry from the poet to the philosopher, and 
