Ice-sheet at tlie northern foot of Newport Mountain, there 

 are wonderful opportunities for natural bird gardens. 



Here, in fertile soil washed down from the granite 

 heights above and constantly renewed, open spaces may 

 readily be covered with the native food-providing shrubs 

 and trees, such as the alternate-leaved cornel, the wild 

 service berry or shad blow which is so beautiful in its 

 springtime flowering, the red-berried ilexes and richly 

 fruiting thorns that bring such glowing color into the 

 northern fall, interspersed with thick bushes suitable for 

 nesting. 



Here, too, there are excellent opportunities for grow- 

 ing along the banks of streams and ponds the seed-bearing 

 herbaceous plants on which the marsh and water birds 

 subsist so largely, and an admirable chance for creating 

 nesting islands upon flooded marshlands that would form 

 ideal breeding places for meadow and aquatic birds. 

 Water in every form is here abundant — in springs and 

 streams and open pools — while the deep, rich soil of the 

 adjoining swamp and swale already i^roduces plants in 

 plenty to entice the birds that haunt such places, and 

 little more is needed than to give these plants a chance 

 to make their best development. 



And here, of all places, an admirable opportunity pre 

 sents itself for the establishment of a bird-study station 

 combined with bird protection, such as has revolutionized 

 abroad in recent years the methods formerly in use for 

 the encouragement and protection of bird life. 



At such a station the best methods of bird protection, 

 food supply and propagation in a northern region would 

 be studied out and given practical trial, and from such 

 a station the results obtained would be published widely 

 for the benefit of the country. 



Work along this line is greatly needed in America, 

 and carried out at Mount Desert, where so strong a tide 

 of summer travels sets each year and where so many 

 people of influence and education, drawn from the whole 



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