3. A PETITION OF THE BIRDS

GEORGE FRISBIE HOAR

George Frisbie Hoar, a United States Senator of Massachusetts, presented an appeal for bird protection to the legislature of his State. When you have finished reading, state the birds' petition briefly in your own words.

To the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: We, the song birds of Massachusetts and their playfellows, make this petition.

We know more about you than you think we do. We know how good you are. We have hopped about the roofs and looked in at the windows of the houses you have built for poor and sick and hungry people and little lame and deaf and blind children. We have built our nests in the trees and sung many a song as we flew about the gardens and parks you have made so beautiful for your own children, especially the children of your poor people, to play in.

Every year we fly a great way over the country, keeping all the time where the sun is bright and warm; and we know that when you do anything, other people all over the land between the seas and the Great Lakes find it out, and pretty soon will try to do the same thing. We know; you know.

We are Americans, just as you are. Some of us, like some of you, came from across the great sea, but most of us have lived here a long while; birds like ourselves welcomed your fathers when they came here many years ago. Our fathers and mothers have always done their best to give pleasure to your fathers and mothers.

Now we have a sad story to tell you. Thoughtless people are trying to destroy us. They kill us because our feathers are beautiful. Even pretty and sweet girls, who we think should be our best friends, kill our brothers and children so that they may wear their plumage on their hats.

Sometimes people kill us heedlessly. Cruel boys destroy our nests and steal our eggs and our young ones. People with guns and snares lie in wait to kill us, as if the place for a bird were not

in the sky, alive, but in the shop window or under a glass case. If this slaughter goes on much longer all your song birds will be gone. Already, we are told, in some other countries that used to be full of birds, they are almost gone.

Now we humbly pray that you stop all this and will save us from this sad fate. You have already made a law that no one shall kill a harmless song bird or destroy our nests or our eggs. Will you please make another that no one shall wear our feathers, so that we shall not be killed for them? We want them all ourselves. We are told that it is as easy for you to help us as for blackbirds to whistle.

If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over. We will build pretty houses which you will like to see. We will teach your children to keep themselves clean and neat. We will show them how to live together in peace and love and to agree as we do in our play about your gardens and flowerbeds — ourselves like flowers on wings without any cost to you. We will destroy the insects and worms that spoil your cherries and currants and plums and apples and roses. We will give you our best songs and make the spring more beautiful and the summer sweeter

to you.

Every June morning when you go out into the field, Oriole and Blackbird and Bobolink will fly after you and make the day more delightful to you; and when you go home tired at sundown Vesper Sparrow will tell you how grateful we are. When you sit on your porch after dark, Fife Bird and Hermit Thrush and Wood Thrush will sing to you, and even Whippoorwill will cheer up a little. We know where we are safe. All the birds will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who loves music will like to make a summer home with you.

The signers are: Brown Thrasher, Robert of Lincoln, Hermit Thrush, Vesper Sparrow, Robin Redbreast, Song Sparrow, Scarlet Tanager, Summer Redbird, Blue Heron, Humming Bird, Yellow Bird, Whippoorwill, Water Wagtail, Woodpecker, Pigeon Woodpecker, Indigo Bird, Yellowthroat, Wilson's Thrush, Chickadee, Kingbird, Swallow, Cedar Bird, Cowbird, Martin, Veery, Vireo, Oriole, Blackbird, Fife Bird, Wren, Linnet, Pewee, Phoebe, Lark, Sandpiper, Chewink.

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CLASS ACTIVITIES

1. What signers of this letter do you recognize when you hear or see them? Be able to give a brief description which will show that you are thinking of the right bird.

2. Upon what basis can each bird you know make a claim for protection? Each member of the class may report upon one bird.

3. Most of the feathers worn on women's hats to-day are artificial. The practice of destroying birds of beautiful plumage has almost ceased. Which of these two facts is most probably the cause of the other fact?

4. Volunteer work:

a. Read as many poems as you can from this list. What values do the poets see in birds?

Henley, William Ernest, "The Blackbird."

Bryant, William Cullen, "Robert of Lincoln."

Wordsworth, William,

Van Dyke, Henry,
Drummond, William,
Richards, Laura E.,
Tennyson, Alfred,
Allington, W. M.,
Thaxter, Celia,
Shakespeare, William,
Hogg, James,

Taylor, Joseph Russell,

Bryant, William Cullen,
Peterson, Frederick,

"To the Cuckoo."

"The Maryland Yellowthroat."

"To the Nightingale."
"Bird Song."

"The Owl."

"Robin Redbreast."

"The Sandpiper."

"Hark, Hark, the Lark."
"The Skylark."

"Blow Softly, Thrush."
"To a Waterfowl."
"Wild Geese."

b. Make a collection of pictures of birds in your locality and post the most beautiful on the bulletin board.

c. Find out how the government protects our birds in bird reservations or by game laws.

CLASS-LIBRARY READINGS

PROTECTING USEFUL BIRDS

1. "The Melancholy Crane," E. McGaffey, in The Promise of Country Life, 123–126.

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2. 'Some Insect Friends of Man," Book of Knowledge, 11: 3255-3259.

3. "Our Animal Friends," ibid., 2 : 499–507.

4. "Nature's Little Workmen," ibid., 3 : 665–676.

5. "Our Charming Neighbors, Feathers," Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, 1 : 400-420.

6. "Birds' Songs and Houses," ibid., 1: 421-426.

This is a true story of Edward William Bok's grandparents, who built their home on a desert island off the coast of Holland. As you read, decide whether the selection is appropriate to place first under "Conserving Forests and Soil."

Along an island in the North Sea, five miles from the Dutch coast, stretches a dangerous ledge of rocks that has proved the graveyard of many a vessel sailing that turbulent sea. On this island once lived a group of men who, as each vessel was wrecked, looted the vessel and murdered those of the crew who reached shore. The government of the Netherlands decided to exterminate the island pirates, and for the job King William selected a young lawyer at The Hague.

"I want you to clean up that island," was the royal order. The job was formidable for a young man of twenty-odd years. By royal proclamation he was made mayor of the island, and within a year, a court of law being established, the young attorney was appointed judge; in that dual capacity he" cleaned up" the island.

The young man now decided to settle on the island, and began to look around for a home. The place was grim, and barren of tree or living green of any kind; to live there was like being exiled to Siberia. Still, argued the young mayor, an ugly place is ugly only because it is not beautiful. And beautiful he determined this island should be.

One day the young mayor-judge called together his council. "We must have trees," he said; "we can make this island a spot of beauty if we will!" But the practical seafaring men demurred; the little money they had was needed for matters far more urgent than trees.

"Very well," was the mayor's decision — and little they guessed what the words were destined to mean - "I will plant them myself." And that year he planted one hundred trees, the first the island had ever seen.

"Too cold," said the islanders; "the severe north winds and storms will kill them all."

"Then I will plant more," said the unperturbed mayor. And for the fifty years that he lived on the island he kept his word. He planted trees each year; moreover, to the island government he deeded land which he turned into public squares and parks, and where each spring he set out shrubs and plants.

Moistened by the salt mist, the trees did not wither, but grew prodigiously. In all that expanse of turbulent sea and only those who have seen the North Sea in a storm know how turbulent it can be there was not a foot of ground on which the birds, storm-driven across the water-waste, could rest in their flight. Hundreds of dead birds often covered the surface of the sea. Then one day the trees had grown tall enough to look over the sea, and, spent and driven, the first.birds came and rested in their leafy shelter. Others came and found protection, and gave their gratitude vent in song.

Within a few years so many birds had discovered the trees in this new island home that they attracted the attention not only of the native islanders but also of the people on the shore five miles distant; the island became famous as the home of the rarest and most beautiful birds. So grateful were the birds for their resting-place that they chose one end of the island as a special spot for the laying of their eggs and the raising of their young, and they fairly peopled it. Very soon ornithologists from various parts of the world came to "Eggland," as the farthermost point of the island came to be known, to see the marvellous sight, not of thousands but of hundreds of thousands of bird-eggs.

A pair of storm-driven nightingales now found the island and