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protest against this themselves. Pictures stimulate the mind and help 
the child to see things in real bird life. Stuffed specimens either dis¬ 
gust children with the subject or tend to furnish incentive for them to 
kill birds and rob nests in order to make collections for themselves. 
Birds are far too valuable in every way for this, and all teaching should 
be directed toward so developing knowledge and love of living birds 
as to completely overwhelm their museum instincts. 
An incident which may be told in a few words has suggested a 
method of bird study which would seem to present great possibilities 
for good. Past September I picked up a young cedar bird that had 
fallen in the grass, so gorged with wild cherries as to be unable to fly. 
I took him in the house, thinking only to keep him a day or two, until 
his wings grew strong enough to escape prowling cats. During this 
time, however, he became so tame, seemed so happy and contented, so 
companionable and withal suggested so many interesting and important 
problems, as to bird taming, study of bird foods, bird study in schools, 
.etc., that it was decided to retain him for other uses, and now as I 
write this he is sitting contentedly on my shoulder preening his feathers 
and tinkling his delicate little ‘ ‘ whisper songs ” into my ear. Methods 
of taming birds will form a section by itself. Interest in food problems 
began by noticing that he very soon began catching flies on the window 
pane. A net full of flies was brought in and he took 78, all there 
were, as fast as they could be given him, and then ate poke berries for 
dessert. The food chart was of great assistance in showing just what 
the cedar bird is known to eat. Besides the foods indicated on the 
chart, however, he was found to take cabbage worms, edema larvae, 
flies, ants, fall web worms (a little sparingly), bush cranberries. No 
attempt was made to follow up the matter, as my time was occupied 
with other things. It serves to demonstrate how easy it may be for a 
child to discover things of real importance in bird life about him. 
The bird was taken first to the zoology class in the high school. 
The pupils ransacked the city for insects with which to make feeding 
tests, and hunted especially for elm beetles in order to discover how 
many of these pests a cedar bird could consume in a day. For a time 
in the late summer elm beetles were abundant and in certain localities 
did considerable damage to the foliage. The cedar birds also appeared 
in numbers and this may account for the fact that practically no elm 
beetles could be found by the class in September and October. The 
