the extermination that awaits many of the finest of the game
birds, and are taking much pains to enforce the laws enacted for game
protection. A selfish interest thus is called into activity, and one
class of birds is receiving protection through the aid of its own
enemies.

But the birds of beautiful plumage are now threatened with extinction
by the desire of womankind for personal decoration. Against this
destruction Audubon societies are organizing a crusade, and Mrs.
Patterson's principal purpose in this book is to direct attention to
the wholesale slaughter of the birds of plumage and song.

The Princess of Wales was requested to write in an album her various
peculiarities. Among the inquiries was: "What is your greatest
weakness?" She answered: "Millinery."

When Napoleon was banished to Elba it is stated that the fallen monarch
was followed by Josephine's old millinery bills. How many of these
bills were for the plumage of slaughtered birds the historian does not
say. But the passion for the beautiful is very strong in the tender
hearts of women, and an earnest appeal to the natural gentleness of the
sex must be made to enlist them in the defense of the birds.

Mrs. Patterson enters upon this task with enthusiasm, and many a bird
will live to flutter through the trees or glisten in the sunshine and
gladden the earth with its beauty that but for this little book would
have perched for a brief season upon the headgear of some lovely woman.

Let the good work go on until the mummy of a dead bird will be
recognized by all persons as an unfitting decoration for the head of
womankind.

JOHN F. LACEY.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE ORCHARD
II. DICKEY DOWNY'S MEDITATIONS
III. THE RULER WITH THE IRON HAND
IV. DICKEY'S COUSINS
V. "DON'T, JOHNNY"
VI. THE PARROT AT A PARTY
VII. A WINTER IN THE SOUTH
VIII. THE PRISON
IX. THE HUNTERS
X. A NEW HOME
XI. THE ILL-MANNERED CHILD
XII. TWO SLAVES OF FASHION
XIII. DICKEY'S VISIT
XIV. THE COUNTRY SCHOOL
XV. POLLY'S FAREWELL

List of Illustrations

The Indigo Bird

The Summer Tanager

The Baltimore Oriole

The Bobolink

Last night Alicia wore a Tuscan Sonnet
And many humming birds were fastened on it.
Caught in a net of delicate creamy crepe
The dainty captives lay there dead together;
No dart of slender bill, no fragile shape
Fluttering, no stir of radiant feather;