se of bird protection is one that appeals to the best
side of our natures. Let us yield to the appeal. Let us have
a Bird Day--a day set apart from all the other days of the
year to tell the children about the birds. But we must not
stop here. We should strive continually to develop and
intensify the sentiment of bird protection, not alone for
the sake of preserving the birds, but also for the sake of
replacing as far as possible the barbaric impulses inherent
in child nature by the nobler impulses and aspirations that
should characterize advanced civilization.

Respectfully,

J. STERLING MORTON,

_Secretary of Agriculture._

Other friends of the birds responded cordially to the request, as will
be seen by the following letters:--

WEST PARK, N. Y., April 22, 1894.

_Dear Sir_,--In response to yours of the seventeenth, I
enclose a few notes about birds to be read upon your "Bird
Day"--just an item or two to stimulate the curiosity of the
young people. The idea is a good one, and I hope you may
succeed in starting a movement that may extend to all the
schools of the country.

Very truly yours,

JOHN BURROUGHS.

628 HANCOCK STREET, BROOKLYN, N. Y., April 25, 1894.

MR. C. A. BABCOCK.

_Dear Sir_,--Yours of the nineteenth is received. I am
delighted to know that your school children are to have a
"Bird Day." I wish I could be there to tell them something
of the delight of getting acquainted with their little
brothers in feathers; how much more interesting they are
when alive and doing all sorts of quaint and charming things
than when dead and made into "skins" or stuffed; and how
much greater is the pleasure of watching them to see how
they live, where they get their dinner, how they take care
of themselves, than of killing them, or hurting them, or
even just driving them away. If the boys and girls only try
keeping still and watching birds to see what they will do, I
am sure no boy will ever again want to throw a stone at one,
and no girl ever to have a dead bird on her hat.

Very truly yours,

OLIVE THORNE MILLER.

CLINTON, April 30, 1894.

_My Dear Sir_,--It strikes me that your idea is a
particularly happy one. Should you institute a "Bird Day,"
the feathered tribe ought to furnish music for the occasion.
A chorus of robins and thrus