Birds and All Nature, Vol. 3, No. 3, March 1898 / Illustrated by Color Photography

ILLUSTRATED BY COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY.
Vol. III.
No. 3.
MARCH, 1898.
THE happiness that is added to human lives by love for the lower creatures is beyond telling. Ernest von Vogelweide, the great German lyric poet of the middle ages, so loved the birds that he left a large bequest to the monks of Wurtzburg on condition that they should feed the birds every day on the tomb-stone over his grave.
Of St. Francis of Assisi's love and tenderness for birds and animals many beautiful stories have been told. The former he particularly loved, and 'tis related they were wont to fly to him, while he talked to, and blessed them. From the hands of a cruel boy he once rescued a pigeon, emblem of innocence and purity, made a nest for it, and watched over it and its young.
Of George Stephenson, the inventor, a beautiful story is told. One day in an upper room of his home he closed the window. Two or three days afterwards, however, he observed a bird flying against, and violently beating its wings as though trying to break the window. His sympathy and curiosity were aroused. What could the little creature want? The window was opened and the bird flew to one particular spot. Alas! one look into the little nest and the bird with the worm still in its beak which he had brought to the mother and his four little ones, fluttered to the floor. Stephenson lifted the exhausted bird, and tried to revive it. But all his efforts proved in vain. At that time the force of George Stephenson's mind was changing the face of the earth; yet he wept at the sight of the dead family and grieved because he had all unconsciously been the cause of their death.

THE United States Department of Agriculture issued in July, 1896, a circular suggesting that a Bird Day be added to the school calendar. In this circular J. Sterling Morton, Secretary of Agriculture, says:
The cause of bird protection is one that appeals to the best side of our natures. Let us yield to the appeal. Let us have a Bird Day—a day set apart from all the other days of the year to tell the children about the birds. But we must not stop here. We should strive continually to develop and intensify the sentiment of bird protection, not alone for the sake of preserving the birds, but also for the sake of replacing as far as possible the barbaric impulses inherent in child nature by the nobler impulses and aspirations that should characterize advanced civilization.