48 
NATURE NOTES 
place for a bird were not in the sky, alive, but in a shop window 
or under a glass case. If this goes on much longer, all your 
song-birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in some other 
countries that used to be full of birds, they are almost gone. 
Even the nightingales are being all killed in Italy. 
“ ‘ Now we humbly pray that you will stop all this, and will 
save us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that 
no one shall kill a harmless song-bird or destroy our nests or 
our eggs. Will you please to make another that no one shall 
wear our feathers, so that no one will kill us to get them ? We 
want them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are pretty enough 
without them. We are told that it is as easy for you to do it 
as for a blackbird to whistle. If you will, we know how to pay 
you a hundred times over. We will teach your children to keep 
themselves clean and neat. We will show them how to live 
together in peace and love and to agree as we do in our nests. 
We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We 
will play about your gardens and flower-beds— ourselves like 
flowers on wings — without any cost to you. We will destroy 
the wicked insects and worms that spoil your cherries and 
currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our 
best songs and make the spring more beautiful and the summer 
sweeter to you. Every June morning when you go out into 
the field, oriole, and blackbird and bobolink will fly after you and 
make the day more delightful to you, and when you go home, 
tired, at sundown, vesper sparrow will tell you how grateful we 
are. When you sit on your porch after dark, fife bird and 
hermit thrush and wood thrush will sing to you ; and even 
whip-poor-will will cheer up a little. We know where we are 
safe. In a little while all the birds will come to live in Massa- 
chusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to 
make a summer home with you.’ ” 
LETTER TO THE EDITOR. 
Flora of North-west Kent. 
An Invitation to Naturalists. 
Dear Sir, — For some time past a few local naturalists have 
been working towards the compilation of a local flora to supple- 
ment the “ Flora of Kent,” by Hanbury and Marshall, published 
in 1899. Owing to the rapid encroachment of building in the 
suburbs many plants which were fairly abundant a few years 
ago are fast disappearing, and it is much to be desired that we 
should have a record ot their last appearances. The under- 
signed would be glad to receive lists of plants found in the 
neighbourhood. It is proposed to limit this local flora to districts 
1 and 2 on the map in Hanbury and Marshall’s “ Flora.” It is, 
of course, important that a printed list should be strictly 
