r under a glass case. If this 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.
Even the nightingales are being all killed in Italy.

"Now we humbly pray that you will 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 to make another that no
one shall wear our feathers, so that no one will kill us to get
them? We want them all ourselves. Your pretty girls are
pretty enough without them. We are told that it is as easy
for you to do it as for Blackbird to whistle.

"If you will, we know how to pay you a hundred times over.
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 nests. We will build pretty houses
which you will like to see. We will play about your gardens
and flower-beds,--ourselves like flowers on wings,--without
any cost to you. We will destroy the wicked 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 to 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 Whip-poor-will will cheer up a little.
We know where we are safe. In a little while all the birds
will come to live in Massachusetts again, and everybody who
loves music will like to make a summer home with you."

I thought it might, perhaps, strike the Legislature of Massachusetts
and the public more impressively than a sober argument. The
whole thing took only fifteen or twenty minutes. The petition
was signed by all the song-birds of Massachusetts, and illustrated
by Miss Ellen Day Hale with the portraits of the signers.
It was presented to the Massachusetts Senate by the Honorable
A. S. Roe, Senator from the Worcester District. The Legislature
acted upon it and passed the following Statute:

"Whoever has in his possession the body of feathers of any
bird whose taking or killing is prohibited b