146 The Opening of the Season. 
teresting to the American husbandman; for unless a good start is 
obtained now, it will be difiicult to get all our crops into the 
ground in proper season. They must go to work in good earnest, 
so that they may always command their own time, and have the 
pleasing satisfaction to know, when they retire to rest at night, 
that they have omitted nothing which they should have attended 
to, and that their business is not behindhand. Nothing which can 
be performed on the farm one day should be delayed to the next; 
for that next, come when it may, will bring something with it 
meriting attention ; and therefore the provident husbandman should 
enter upon each day's labor with a hrm and unflinching determi- 
nation of doing that which is most proper to be done. By doing 
things in detail, as they respectively occur, is the way not only to 
get over the greatest amount of work, but of doing every descrip- 
tion of it in the best time. 
The season for the singing of birds having also arrived, let us 
all unite in their preservation. Let every parent discourse to his 
children on the advantages derived from the feathered songsters in 
the economy of nature. Tell them of the millions of insects de- 
stroyed by a single pair of little birds, during the season of rear- 
ing their infant family; and the millions of millions of pernicious 
insects which would be the progeny of those thus destroyed, if 
they were suffered to survive for a single year. Inform them of 
the quantities of grain, and grass, and fruit which perish annually 
by the depredations of the insect tribe, and that the birds are the 
only antagonists which we can avail ourselves of, for protection 
from such insidious invaders of our rights. Remove the smaller 
birds which keep the insect tribes in check, and the earth would 
soon become one great desert, uninhabitable by either man or 
beast, for the food designed by Providence for our sustenance, 
would be wholly swallowed up or destroyed by the myriads of in- 
sects which would speedily cover its surface. 
We therefore enjoin it on parents and teachers, to be alive to 
this subject, and give the rising generation suitable instructions; 
enlighten them ; convince them of the w^ickedness, the inhu- 
manity, the impolicy, of destroying their best friends; and the 
great mischief will soon be stayed, and the birds will once more 
sing in peace and safety. 
. "April and ]^,Iay," says Howitt, "the months which the poets 
have so much delighted to paint as every thing delicious and poeti- 
cal, suffer too frequently the tyranny of the east wind. We are never, 
in this country, sure of steady, genial weather, till well advanced 
in June. But fickleness and uncertainty have always been the 
character of our climate; and who shall blame even the seasons 
for standing up for their ancient character? If our spring be un 
certain, no doubt we enjoy the more the fine days, and the occa 
