Then men came in boats and drove away my playmates in a flock to be
clubbed and killed. When I ran back to my mother I could not find her,
but her beautiful coat had been torn off and thrown upon a pile of
skins. My mother had been killed while she was trying to find me. I
wonder if any woman would wear my mother's coat if she knew this.
WHAT THE YOUNG SEABIRD THINKS.
There comes that man with a gun! The winter wren has just told me what
it means. It seems that women like to wear the feathers of dead birds,
and that man is trying to shoot my mother as she comes back to her nest.
I am afraid I shall never see her again.
The wren tells me that people like to adorn themselves with the skins of
fur-coated animals. It does seem strange that men and women think that
they cannot be well dressed without killing us and wearing our clothes.
WHAT THE BIRDS DO FOR US.
Have you ever thought what the world would be without the birds? A
learned Frenchman, named Michelet, said that if it were not for the
birds there would be no plant life, no animal life, no life at all upon
this earth. Hosts of insects would destroy all plant life, and if there
were no plants, no animals could live. The common chickadee destroys in
twenty-five days more than a hundred thousand eggs of the cankerworm
moth, and the chickadee is one of our smallest birds.
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