.

Nowhere else has such a scheme been attempted, and never before has
there been just such a day of jubilee. The intense interest
manifested by the children, and the earnest enthusiasm manifested,
leaves no doubt about their carrying out their part of the contract.

[Illustration: DISTRIBUTING BIRD BOXES AND FRUIT TREES]

Up to date (1912) Mr. Phillips has given away about 1,000 bird boxes,
1,500 cherry and Russian mulberry trees, and transformed the schools of
Carrick into seething masses of children militantly enthusiastic in the
protection of birds, and in providing them with homes and food. As a
final coup, Mr. Phillips has induced the city of Pittsburgh to create
the office of City Ornithologist, at a salary of $1200 per year. The
duty of the new officer is to protect all birds in the city from all
kinds of molestation, especially when nesting; to erect bird-houses,
provide food for wild birds, on a large scale, and report annually upon
the increase or decrease of feathered residents and visitors. Mr.
Frederic S. Webster, long known as a naturalist and practical
ornithologist, has been appointed to the position, and is now on active
duty.

So far as we are aware, Pittsburgh is the first city to create the
office of City Ornithologist. It is a happy thought; it will yield good
results, and other cities will follow Pittsburgh's good example.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLII

THE ETHICS OF SPORTSMANSHIP

I count it as rather strange that American and English sportsmen have
hunted and shot for a century, and until 1908 formulated practically
nothing to establish and define the ethics of shooting game. Here and
there, a few unwritten principles have been evolved, and have become
fixed by common consent; but the total number of these is very few.
Perhaps this has been for the reason that every free and independent
sportsman prefers to be a law unto himself. Is it not doubly strange,
however, that even down to the present year the term "sportsmen" never
has been defined by a sportsman!

Forty years ago, a sportsman might have been defined, according to the
standards of that period, as a man who hunts wild game for pleasure.
Those were the days wherein no one foresaw the wholesale annihilation of
species, and there were no wilderness game preserves. In those days,
gentlemen shot female hoofed game, trapped bears if they felt like it,
killed ten times as much big game as they