linery business."

"I have told my mother," said a tall, serious faced girl, "that I think
it is wrong to wear bird feathers, and she has promised to give up
wearing any of them except ostrich plumes."

Mrs. Wood asked permission to say a few words just here, and the
president said: "Certainly, we are always glad to hear from you."

She went up on the platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear
boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston,
giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a
few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that
grows swarms with insect life, and that they couldn't grow if the birds
didn't eat the insects that would devour their foliage. All day long,
the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted
gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, and picks off the
beetles, the martins destroy weevil, the quail and grouse family eats
the chinchbug, the woodpeckers dig the worms from the trees, and many
other birds eat the flies and gnats and mosquitoes that torment us so.
No flying or crawling creature escapes their sharp little eyes. A great
Frenchman says that if it weren't for the birds human beings would
perish from the face of the earth. They are doing all this for us, and
how are we rewarding them? All over America they are hunted and killed.
Five million birds must be caught every year for American women to wear
in their hats and bonnets. Just think of it, girls. Isn't it dreadful?
Five million innocent, hard-working, beautiful birds killed, that
thoughtless girls and women may ornament themselves with their little
dead bodies. One million bobolinks have been killed in one month near
Philadelphia. Seventy song-birds were sent from one Long Island village
to New York milliners.

"In Florida, cruel men shoot the mother bird on their nests while they
are rearing their young, because their plumage is prettiest at that
time. The little ones cry pitifully, and starve to death. Every bird
of the rarer kinds that is killed, such as humming birds, orioles and
kingfishers, means the death of several others that is, the young that
starve to death, the wounded that fly away to die, and those whose
plumage is so torn that it is not fit to put in a fine lady's bonnet. In
some cases where birds have gay wings, and the hunters do not wish the
rest of the body, they tear off the wings from the living bird