Year: 1870

The Boston Post puts in a plea for the
birds against the wandering Bedouins Of
the fields, who are petitioning the
Legislature to repeal the law for the pro-
lection of the feathered tribes. sh


Men who would murder innocent sleep
itself are asking the privilege of levelling
their deadly Manton tubes at the gay little
robins and larks that give voice to our
summer season. They want to load the
carcasses of what few quail still struggle
about the pastures with cowardly charges
of cold lead. Not content with the wholly
wrong license already permitted in many
instances, they ruthlessly seek in the name
of sport for liberty to mangle and murder
the harmless song-birds of our gardens
and orchards, whose early and late music
makes the air vocal and rains showers Of
delight on the roofs of all our rural dwell
ings. There is a concert Of movement a
gainst the immunities enjoyed by our
harmless sea-fowl The double -barrelled
Huns would chase the gulls off the coast.
And the same with other birds. The
crows and jays are hunted of all gunners
now, being unrecognized by our laws as
having rights which humans are bound to
respect. 1t is outright barbarity to permit
birds to be shot either before or during
the season of increase. Nor ought any to
be lawful game for the sportsman, that do
not offer the temptation of valuable food.
Unlicensed destruction should not be prac-
tised upon any but the innocent song
birds of the fields and the gardens, these
certainly appeal to our truest sense and
tenderest sentiment for their perpetual pro-
lection. What would the country be in
summer without its orchestra Of thrushes
and sparrows and larks and buntings?
The copses of maple and birch would be,
dead and desoate The apple trees of the
orchard are worth more to the healthy
heart for their crops of robins nests than
for their burdens of rosy apples. What
adds to the pensile grace of the elm before
the homestead door more than the little
hammock which the flashing oriole has
hung from its lower branches? How
much dearer is the old porch for the mud
nest which the homely phoebe has plastered
in the cornice Who would let q rude
hand disturb the nest in the maple tree
from which the bright eyes of the callow
young stare into the chamber windows?


The Audubon spirit should be cherish
ed by every man, whether farmer or not,
who is wont to set foot in the summer
fields; and in the Legislature it would
crystalline in appropriate laws. The sem
timent that would defend the bird is the
same that gives domestic life its express
sion. The song of the blackbird on o
sunny day in the silvery sycamore has
softer and sadder note than the campanile
bird that wakes the echoes of the night in
the deep forests of South America. Our
blith little bluebird has cheerier note In
the early spring than one can detect in the
prettiest talk from the tongue of bird Of.
Mino. These little feathered gentry de-
serve the devotedness of some Ruskin to
render their architecture into poetic prose;
from the crow who constructs his Gothic
buttresses in the tops of the lofticst oaks
of the forest to the Saracenic oriole and
Oriental humming-bird whose airy homes
are gems of grace. The stones of Venice
proffer no more profoundly interesting in
scriptions, INTELLECTUALLY recorded, than
does the last years nest that still hangs
just over the edge of the waterfall; nor
are all their storied suggestions more at
tractive than contemplation of the home
of the domestic pewee, the meadow lark
under foot in the grass, and the wren
which chatters ceaselessly at his door,