File:How to attract the birds - and other talks about bird neighbors (1903) (14751913035).jpg

Identifier: howtoattractbird00bla (find matches)
Title: How to attract the birds : and other talks about bird neighbors
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Blanchan, Neltje, 1865-1918
Subjects: Birds Bird attracting
Publisher: New York : Doubleday Page
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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looked this. We leftnature unread then, thinking that everything worthknowine: had to be studied out of lesson books.And the idea of knowledge that obtained in a NewEngland academy was almost medieval. It borealmost no relation to the peoples daily lives. Wherenearly the entire population earned a living from thesoil, absolutely nothing was done toward making thepeople understand it and love it. Is it any wonderthat farming meant failure so often and that theambitious young people rushed madly toward thecities? We are only just learning to enjoy nature,to open our blind eyes and see the world aroundus, to stop destroying and preserve the beneficentgifts lavished upon us, to utilize them intelligently,which is to agree with our Creator that His creationis good. A NEW THING UNDER THE SUN In the quite sudden popular interest in naturerecently manifest, birds have come in for, perhaps,the lions share of attention. Unlike most move-ments, this is an absolutely new one in the history of i66
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What Birds Do for Us the world, not a revival. One might have thoughtthat so intensely practical a people as the Americanswould have taken up economic ornithology first ofall, have learned with scientific certainty which birdsare too destructive for survival and which so valua-ble that every measure ought to be taken to preserveand increase them. In reality this has been the lastaspect of the subject to receive attention. Firstcame the classifiers — Wilson, Audubon, Baird, andNuttall — the pioneers in systematic bird study.Thoreau was as a voice crying in the wilderness.His books lay in piles on the attic floor, unsold manyyears after his death. It remained for John Bur-roughs to awaken the popular enthusiasm for out-of-door life generally and for birds particularly, whichis one of the signs of our times. Among the first acts passed in the Colonies werebounty laws, not only offering rewards for the headsof certain birds that were condemned without fairtrial, but imposing fixed fin

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