3o6 NATURE STUDY AND LIFE 



even our commonest species, and what is worse, do not 

 care to learn or know anything about them. This means 

 that, excellent as our bird books are, there is something 

 lacking; and it is in the hope of supplying two vital rela- 

 tions between child life and bird life that the following 

 pages are written. We must teach the children the 

 human value and importance of birds. We must suggest 

 things for them to do which shall help and increase the 

 bird life about their homes. 



Up to within a few years the usual methods of studying 

 birds consisted in mounting, preparing skins, and making 

 collections of nests and eggs. More recently we have 

 come to know that birds are too valuable to be used in 

 this way, and the opera glass and camera have to some 

 extent happily displaced the gun. But, in general, we 

 are in the negative phase expressed by a sentence from 

 one of the best outlines of the course of study for a city 

 school : Insist that no boy or girl destroy a bird or its 

 nest. Negative effort is uninteresting and, at best, little 

 more than a suggestion to do the thing prohibited. In 

 the same time we can much more easily teach, on the 

 positive side, work that the children will enjoy doing and 

 that will make abuse of bird life impossible. 



The important question is : What do birds do in the 

 world .'' About this point center all our laws for bird pro- 

 tection. We must first gain, by observation and personal 

 acquaintance with the living birds of each species, a 

 knowledge of their ways, their foods, their beauties, and 

 their songs. Then give the imagination full play to 

 picture what the whole species is doing in every farm 

 and garden and about every home in the land. Think 



