As the nesting-season of our feathered friends approaches the
mind naturally reverts to the grief in store for so many of them.
Notwithstanding the efforts of the several Audubon societies, the
humane journals, and in rare instances earnest pleas from the
pulpit, fashion decrees that the wearing of bird plumage, and the
birds themselves, is still _de rigueur_ among women. The past
season, certainly, showed no diminution of this barbarous fashion--a
humiliating thing to record--and so the beautiful creatures will
continue to be slaughtered, not by hundreds or thousands, but by
millions upon millions, all for the gratification of woman's vanity and
a senseless love of display.
Alas, that the "fair" sex in whom the quality of mercy is supposed
to exist in a high degree, should still wear above their serene
brows--often bowed in worship--the badge of inhumanity and
heartlessness. That mothers who have experienced all the pangs as well
as joys of motherhood can aid in breaking up thousands of woodland
homes by wearing the plumage which makes the slaughter of these birds
one of commercial value and necessity. Soon accounts will be published
of the fabulous sums to be gained by the heron hunters, and in order to
supply the demand for the filmy, delicate _aigrette_ to adorn my lady's
bonnet, the nesting colony of these snowy egrets will be visited by the
plume-hunters and the work of slaughter begin. Love and anxiety for
their nestlings will render them heedless of danger, and through all
the days of carnage which follow, not one parent bird will desert its
nest. Fortunately the birds are instantly killed by the bullet, else,
stripped of the coveted plumes they will be thrown in a heap, there
slowly to die within sight and hearing of their starving, pleading
little ones. These have no value for the plume-hunter, and so off he
goes with his spoil, leaving thousands of orphaned nestlings to a
painful, lingering death. And all this for a plume, which, in these
days of enlightenment marks the wearer either as a person of little
education, or totally lacking in refinement of feeling. It is trite
to say that motherhood no more than womanhood necessarily implies
refinement in the individual, but surely in the former, one would, in
the nature of things, expect to find engendered a feeling of tender
pity for any helpless animal and its offspring.
It is this phase of the question which particularly appeals to people
in whom love, as well as compassion for _all_ helpless creatures is
strong, not a sentiment newly awakened, or adopted as a fad. That
genuine love for animals is inherent and not a matter of education the
close observer, I think, will admit. Not that a child cannot be brought
to recognize, when caught in any act of cruelty to some defenseless
creature, the wanton wickedness of his act, but that no amount of
suasion can influence him to treat it with kindness for _love's_ sake
rather than from the abstract moral reason that it is right.
How can this love for animals exist in a child who has never known
the joy of possessing a household pet? In whose presence an intrusive
dog or cat is ever met with a blow, or angry command to "get out?"
When somebody's lost pet comes whining at the door, piteously pleading
for a kindly pat, and a morsel to eat, and is greeted with a kick,
or possibly a bullet, under the pretense that the exhausted, panting
little animal might go mad? How can a child who has witnessed these
things view a suffering animal with any other feeling but calm
indifference, or a brutal desire to inflict upon it additional pain? In
his estimation every dog is subject to rabies, and every cat infested
with fleas.
Paternal apathy in this direction may, to some extent, be remedied by
the child's instructors, especially in the kindergarten, where the
foundation of character is supposed to be laid. But even there the
teacher will fail in arousing a feeling of compassion in a naturally
cruel child's mind, unless her own sympathies are genuine, and not
assumed for the time or place. Here more than anywhere else, it
seems to me, intelligence, if not love, should prompt the teacher
to familiarize herself with the treatment necessary not only to the
well-being but to the happiness of the little captives held for the
purpose of nature-study in her class.
As spring opens, thousands of would-be naturalists, stimulated by
nature-study in schools, will, no doubt, begin their universal search
for birds' eggs, not from any particular interest in science, but as
they collect stamps or marbles, simply to see how many they can get.
In this way millions of birds are destroyed with no thought beyond the
transitory triumph and pleasure of getting them. This egg-collecting
should not be encouraged by the teachers. On the contrary every boy
should be told that a _true_ naturalist does not slaughter animals, or
rob birds' nests promiscuously; that he is the first to remonstrate
against wanton waste of life; that he does not take eggs of common
birds at all, and never _empties_ a nest unless of a rare bird, and
sometimes not always then. These arguments will prevail among a few
who have the real naturalist's instinct, but to the many who either
do not know, or do not care, about the cruelty they inflict upon
the parent birds in thus robbing them of their treasures, another
appeal must be made. Picture the family life of the innocent little
creatures--a lesson indeed to people of larger growth; how they guard
their nests with almost human care and wisdom, and how they cherish
their young with as faithful and self-sacrificing love as parents
of human families. Impress upon their young minds how many days of
toil the mother-bird, aided by her mate, spent in building the nest
which they purpose to rifle, of her joy and pride when the first egg
was deposited, and all the patiently borne days of brooding which
followed. Surely a boy not wholly depraved would be moved by such
a recital, and thus thousands of birds be saved, and through their
influence, protected. In this way, too, might not the whole question of
slaughtering birds for millinery purposes be solved, for what mother
or sister could turn a deaf ear to the reproaches of a child, or to
pleadings from young lips for more humane treatment of their feathered
friends?
That the small boy is not without wit, and quick to perceive the
difference between precept and practice, the following anecdote, I
think, will aptly prove:
She was smartly dressed, and when she met one of her scholars bearing
off a nest in which were five pretty little speckled eggs, she did not
hesitate to stop him.
"You are a wicked boy," she exclaimed indignantly. "How could you rob
the birds of their nest? No doubt, at this very minute, the poor mother
is hovering about the tree grieving for the loss of the eggs which you
carry."
"_Oh, she don't care_," replied the urchin, edging off with a derisive
smile, "_she's on your hat_."