The Emu. 
And Saint Francis rejoiced with them, and was glad, and 
marvelled much at so great a company of birds and their most 
beautiful diversity, and their good heed and sweet friendliness, 
for which cause he devoutly praised their Creator in them." 
There is natural history in the old legend as well as the human 
lesson that love casts out fear. The birds to-day, as in the time of 
the good Saint Francis, quickly recognize their friends. 
I would that a modern Saint Francis would preach to his big 
sisters the women, "charming" them to desist from the 
encouragement of bird slaughter for decorative purposes. The 
savage dies hard in us all, but surely we might for our 
corroborees content ourselves with such feathers as are plucked 
from the birds slain for food, and those that the Ostrich 
industry provides. 
It is not that we do not care when we realize our cruelties, 
but that we are careless with regard to realization, like the 
woman who reproved a little boy for robbing birds' nests, while 
trimming her own hat was a whole bird of the species which 
had laid the eggs. But my brief is not for women, but for birds. 
No need for caged birds in the bush, it seems to me. And, 
looked at from the modern utilitarian standard, how much more 
useful the insect-devouring birds are at large, saving our gardens 
and our grass from many a plague, helping, too, to keep under 
the weeds by eating their seeds. 
My tame wild birds are uncaught, uncaged, though they own 
me as their " lady," in one of the old senses of the word — a 
breaker of bread. Every morning after breakfast finds me on 
the front verandah, facing a low, spreading tamarisk, which 
waves its feathery branches, just now pink-tipped with budding 
flowers, in defiance of the many droughts. There I stand crumb- 
ling the bread I hold, as I whistle my bird call. 
Sith, shish, shirr ! there they are. First the " Gidgeeais," as 
the darkies call them, but variously known as " The Happy 
Family," The Twelve Apostles," and " Seven Sisters." Such 
a noisy, self-assertive crowd. Very homespun-looking birds, 
dim grey, with light-brown touches on the wings, boot-button 
eyes, and raucous voices which, as they are always in flocks, are 
rather deafening. My particular flock numbers twelve usually, 
though just now they are only coming intermittingly, a few at a 
time, the rest guarding their mud tree-nests. 
The tamarisk is a sort of green-room where the bird troupes 
preen their plumage between the acts. First of all they fly on 
to the stage — a gravelled pathway under the verandah porch, 
where are flower-pot saucers of water. There they peck away at 
the dry crumbs, or the soaking crusts, or, if grass-seed is scarce, 
the oats I scatter. No patent sheller is in it for rapidity with 
the "Gidgeeais" at husking the grain. Presently such a noise — 
Gidgee-oi-ee ! gidgee-oi-ee ! " and a frou-frou flight to the 
green-room as a couple of cats steal up, hoping to surprise their 
