to have done more than any one else for dumb animals.
She had taken around a petition to the village boys, asking them not to
search for birds' eggs, and she had even gone into her father's stable,
and asked him to hold her up, so that she could look into the horses'
mouths to see if their teeth wanted filing or were decayed. When her
father laughed at her, she told him that horses often suffer terrible
pain from their teeth, and that sometimes a runaway is caused by a metal
bit striking against the exposed nerve in the tooth of a horse that has
become almost frantic with pain.

She was a very gentle girl, and I think by the way that she spoke that
her father loved her dearly, for she told how much trouble he had taken
to make some tiny houses for her that she wanted for the wrens that came
about their farm. She told him that those little birds are so good at
catching insects that they ought to give all their time to it, and not
have any worry about making houses. Her father made their homes very
small, so that the English sparrows could not get in and crowd them out.

A boy said that he had gotten a pot of paint, and painted in large
letters on the fences around his father's farm: "Spare the toads, don't
kill the birds. Every bird killed is a loss to the country."

"That reminds me," said the president, "to ask the girls what they have
done about the millinery business."

"I have told my mother," said a tall, serious-faced girl, "that I think
it is wrong to wear bird feathers, and she has promised to give up
wearing any of them except ostrich plumes."

Mrs. Wood asked permission to say a few words just here, and the
president said: "Certainly, we are always glad to hear from you."

She went up on the platform, and faced the roomful of children. "Dear
boys and girls," she began, "I have had some papers sent me from Boston,
giving some facts about the killing of our birds, and I want to state a
few of them to you: You all know that nearly every tree and plant that
grows swarms with insect life, and that they couldn't grow if the birds
didn't eat the insects that would devour their foliage. All day long,
the little beaks of the birds are busy. The dear little rose-breasted
gross-beak carefully examines the potato plants, and picks off the
beetles, the martins destroy weevil, the quail and grouse family eats
the chinch-bug, the woodpeckers dig the worms from the trees, and many
other birds eat the flies and gnats and