BIRDS AFIELD 
“The meek shall inherit the earth.” That saying has 
been applied to the animal as well as the human inhabitants 
of this world and it is certainly true. The fierce and blood- 
thirsty beasts are fast perishing from off the face of the earth, 
and their place is being taken by the small, the weak, the 
timid, the creatures who know how to hide themselves, or 
who have the capacity of fleeing from their enemies. 
Nature gives them the art of protecting themselves from 
destruction, and then declares that they are more fitted to 
live, and so they survive while the others die. What a 
paradox it seems that this should be so! That a bird, whose 
heart will beat like a trip hammer with fear, if you so much 
as touch it with your fingers, should by right survive the tiger, 
who can slay you with one blow of his relentless paw, seems 
a curious fact. Discretion has more saving grace than valor 
in Nature’s plan apparently. 
No panthers nor wolves nor buffaloes lend their fierce charm 
to any landscape with which most of us are familiar — I 
cannot help feeling a secret regret that such is the fact — but 
instead we are surrounded by all kinds of small, often un- 
noticed creatures, squirrels, chipmunks, snakes, birds, toads, 
mice, insects even, not all harmless, but all mild or meek 
compared with the ferocious creatures of other days. The 
only large animals left in what we call civilized countries are 
the domestic animals, which can certainly be numbered with 
the meek and, therefore, according to the promise shall 
_ “inherit the earth.” 
But if many species are to be crowded out, I rejoice that 
birds are among those that Nature pronounces fitted to 
remain. There is no form of life from plants up to the 
highest order of vertebrates that would not repay study — 
even insects are an absorbing topic to the initiated — but to 
my mind no creatures are as interesting as birds. What a 
boundless pleasure they have been to me! I long for the 
golden tongue of a St. Chyrsostom wherewith to persuade 
people to study them and to have the same pleasure in it 
that I have had. A speaker asked an audience of children 
who our feathered friends were. “Angels,” a little girl re- 
plied, and I feel that she was not far wrong. 
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