rth again--missing him long!

NOTES

CONSERVATION

We cannot read much nature literature of the present day without coming
upon a plea, either implied or expressed, for "conservation." Even the
child will wish to know--and there is grave need that he should
know--why many people, and societies of people, are trying to save what
it has so long been the common custom to waste. Boys and girls living in
the Eastern States will be interested to know who is Ornithologist to
the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture, and what his duties are;
those in the West will like to know why a publication called "California
Fish and Game" should have for its motto, "Conservation of Wild Life
through Education"; those between the East and the West will like to
learn what is being done in their own states for bird or beast or
blossom.

Fortunately the idea is not hard to grasp. Conservation is really but
doing unto others as we would that others should do unto us--so living
that other life also may have a fair chance. It was a child who wrote,
from her understanding heart:--

"When I do have hungry feels I feel the hungry feels the birds must be
having. So I do have comes to tie things on the trees for them. Some
have likes for different things. Little gray one of the black cap has
likes for suet. And other folks has likes for other things."--From _The
Story of Opal._

CHICK, D.D.

_Penthestes atricapillus_ is the name men have given the bird who calls
himself the "Chickadee."

_The Bird_ (Beebe), page 186. "The next time you see a wee chickadee,
calling contentedly and happily while the air makes you shiver from head
to foot, think of the hard-shelled frozen insects passing down his
throat, the icy air entering lungs and air-sacs, and ponder a moment on
the wondrous little laboratory concealed in his mite of a body, which
his wings bear up with so little effort, which his tiny legs support,
now hopping along a branch, now suspended from some wormy twig.

"Can we do aught but silently marvel at this alchemy? A little bundle of
muscle and blood, which in this freezing weather can transmute frozen
beetles and zero air into a happy, cheery little Black-capped Chickadee,
as he names himself, whose trustfulness warms our hearts!

"And the next time you raise your gun to needlessly take a feathered
life, think of the marvellous little engine which your lead will stifle
forever; lower your weapon and look into the clear