ORNITHOLOGY 
berries, and similar kinds of fruit ; they 
also love angling-worms. But in addi- 
tion to these items of diet, they help to 
check the dangerous multiplying of in- 
sects that militate against the economic 
interests of man. 
There are many sides from which we 
may consider the killing of a young 
robin — or any other kind of young bird 
for the matter of that, and the conse- 
quences cannot be too often brought 
before the boys of the present genera- 
“NOTHING LESS THAN A PTECE OF WANTON 
VICIOUSNESS.” 
tion. As a rule, boys take kindly to 
such instruction, and in the long run 
the best-minded of them — if they ever 
were young bird killers — give up the 
practice entirely, and are quite content 
to turn to other objects for their tar- 
gets. Mind you, I believe in American 
boys being crack shots with a gun ; 
and that all others who believe as I do 
are right in the matter has been proven 
by what the grown-up boys did at the 
front in France. On the other hand, 
the sniping of helpless little birds has 
/ / 
nothing to recommend it; besides, it 
is cowardly and cruel, and no manly 
boy aims to be anything of the kind. 
Ah, Bob White! 
BY A. ASHMUN KELLY, DOWNINGTOWN, PA. 
In the early part and middle of sum- 
mer I, with exquisite pleasure, heard 
this cheery call, and always at such 
times recur to me the words from 
“Little Brown Hands”: 
They drive home the cows from the pasture, 
Up through the long, shady lane, 
Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat 
field, 
That is yellow with ripening grain. 
It is the male, of course, that 
whistles, “Ah, Bob White.” It is his 
call to his lady love. Audubon said 
that if two males chanced to meet in 
one field they would battle until one 
was driven away. 
The clarion call of the barnyard 
rooster is perhaps the most extraordi- 
nary sound emitted by any animal or 
bird. The song of the whippoorwill is 
next, with the bobwhite following close 
after. I read the other day in a paper 
that a man in Pocono Mountains, Penn- 
sylvania, in one evening counted four 
hundred and forty-six calls by a whip- 
poorwill without a stop; the bird then 
halted for a few seconds, then resumed 
and ran up to one thousand without a 
stop. We hear that in the western part 
of Pennsylvania quail are scarce, and 
that the whippoorwill is almost extinct. 
A Snapping Turtle Catches a Hen. 
BY A. ASHMUN KELLY, DOWNINGTOWN, PA. 
A neighboring farmer’s wife one 
morning, hearing a hen squawking in 
a most distressed way, investigated 
and found that the hen was stuck fast 
in a stream of water that ran near-by. 
Then she saw that the bird was being 
dragged downstream, nolens volens, by 
a big turtle. With a broom handle 
she whacked the turtle over the back, 
and so surprised him that he liberated 
the hen, that lost no time in getting 
away. 
Daybreak. 
White mist in the valley, a light on the hill, 
A glory of color the heavens to fill, 
And a glad new day in the east is born. 
With a star looking down on the pageant 
of morn. 
— Emma Peirce. 
