AUGUST 
M3 
greater than that of law — to bring this inhumanity to an instant 
stop. Every appeal has thus far been in vain. Birds continue 
to be slaughtered, not by hundreds, nor by thousands, but by 
millions upon millions, for the gratification of a senseless fad. 
Whole species of the most beautiful denizens of field and forest, 
woodland and shore, have been almost or quite exterminated. 
Song birds have been driven further and further from the 
dwellings of men ; our country is stripped of one of its least 
costly and most charming delights ; and all for what ? For the 
gratification of a silly vanity, of which women ought to be 
ashamed. It is in vain that economists and men of science have 
protested in the name of utility, in vain that the pulpit and press 
protest against it in the name of humanity ; and we fear that 
legislation will have little more effect. So far as it may avail, 
in however slight a degree, in diminishing the nefarious business 
of bird destruction, we shall be thankful for this legislation ; yet 
we confess that we have read this bill with a feeling of sincere 
humiliation, because it seems to us to be a just indictment of 
the women of America on a charge of wilful, wanton, reckless 
inhumanity. The worst of it is that the indictment is just. 
The women of America who have made it possible by making 
such legislation necessary, ought to be ashamed of themselves. 
— From Our Animal Friends. 
AUGUST.! 
August days, and August weather ; 
Rain, and wind, and sun together ; 
Budding willows, flow’rs unfolding; 
Bleating, new-born lambs beholding 
Meadows green ; birds singing — hearken 
Trilling, warbling, till skies darken ; 
Ploughs at work, and here men sowing 
Fields for ruddy autumn’s mowing. 
* Those of England have an equal cause for shame. — E d. JVuV. 
t It is startling at first to read of August as a spring month ; but these lines 
are from “ Poems, by a New Zealander” (Kegan Paul). 
