Wild Robin at His Bath. Photographed from life by Samuel Jackson.
Barn-swallows build under roofs; cliff-swallows, under eaves; the white-bellied-swallow and martin, in boxes set up for that purpose, when these shelters are not preëmpted by the English sparrows.
The native swallows destroy an amount of noxious insects beyond calculation, and almost beyond imagination. Without birds this world would, because of insects, be uninhabitable, yet each year two hundred millions of them are sacrificed for women’s hats and bonnets. Aside from the inexcusable barbarity of this practice is its menace to our trees, our crops, and our very existence.
CHAPTER VII.
A BOY’S BACK-YARD WORKSHOP.
How to make Buildings Plumb and Level.
By a workshop is meant a place where a boy can build a boat, sled, box-kite, man-kite,[8] mend a golf-club, a broken bicycle, his mother’s rocking-chair, his aunt’s umbrella, or build a paper-balloon.[9] It is a room, house, or shed, where a boy can do what pleases him, without being in everybody’s way; a place where he can retire and idly whittle a stick, or seriously work out some youthful invention; a place where he can entertain his young friends during the rainy or stormy days of winter, and where they can talk over the new football team, baseball or golf club, without being oppressed with the knowledge that their loud talk is annoying the older folks.