20 
feeding and earing for the bird. It is a sign of acquaintance when 
he begins to answer you back. Sometimes my birds will flutter vio¬ 
lently when I enter the room, especially in a dim light, but cease 
instantly when the note of greeting and assurance is given. Birds in 
life make so much of notes and calls that they naturally play an im¬ 
portant role in taming. This serves also as an excellent reason for 
learning bird notes and calls. 
I give these hints in some detail, because I wish all children might 
be led to use them in their relations to birds, not only in confinement 
but especially out of doors, as well. Those who have not tried it can 
have no idea of the pure enjoyment, both for the birds and ourselves, 
which wait upon this kind of bird study. It is something that every¬ 
body can and ought to do. Bird collecting and skinning and stuffing 
is at best but sad drudgery, and I speak from dreary, though in many 
respects successful, experience. I hope almost enough of it has been 
done to last the country for the next thousand years, and what remains 
should be done by experts and the results should be preserved in moth¬ 
proof tin boxes in museums and not on exhibition; for scientific refer¬ 
ence and not for show. Bird study afield or through an opera glass is 
at best for the few who have money and leisure. L,ike the flowers of 
our homes this kind of bird study, which aims to attract birds about 
our homes, should become part of our ordinary home life, an equal 
delight to parents and children, rich and poor, busy and idle, alike. 
Mrs. Treat has testified as to the satisfactions of such bird study as 
follows: “There is a keen sense of enjoyment — I might say, of 
exalted happiness — in being able to bring the free birds of the grove 
around one, which well repays for the time and patience and hermit¬ 
like life necessary to accomplish it.” (Home Studies in Nature, 
1885, p. 27.) 
After four years of pleasure, “exalted happiness,” we will not 
call it work, in attracting birds to her home she is able to report 27 
nests on her lot, “several of them in close proximity to the house.” 
Mrs. Treat has not “dropped ” the study. Indeed, I doubt if any one 
really begins this study, that they ever could “drop” it. Under date 
of January 23, 1899, she writes me that twenty-five species have nested 
about her place. Of these she says, “The catbirds have become 
tamer than any other birds. I have had a pair so tame that they 
would eat from my hand and follow me into the house. The brown 
