The Animal World, A Book of Natural History Part 64

When you have done this, let your boys understand the position they must take on this subject if they wish to be regarded as "true sportsmen,"

not to say gentlemen. Their training should begin early. Little boys are fond of bean-shooters--a forked stick, or "crutch," with a rubber band hurling a bean or a pebble. Insist that they do not use it for knocking over birds.

All boys, also, pa.s.s through a season of "collecting specimens," when they are enthusiastic toward preparing a cabinet of natural history.

Encourage them to do so, but without taking life, or robbing birds'

nests. Give them an opera-gla.s.s instead of a shotgun. Show them how they can learn more, and get more amus.e.m.e.nt, by watching the bird family in its home than by arranging dead sh.e.l.ls on a string or in a box. (Watch the birds yourself a while, and then see how you feel about your hat!) There is no scientific need or excuse, nowadays, for private collections of the skins or eggs of birds, and the stopping of all birds'-nesting is of the utmost importance for the same reasons as the stoppage of millinery murder; and both are the immediate duty of all parents.

Nor must there be forgotten, in considering this matter, the disastrous effect of recklessness as to waste and suffering on the mind of the game-hog, the birds'-nester, and the aigrette-wearer. Cruelty cannot be practiced without crus.h.i.+ng and blighting the best insects. As Burns says:

"It hardens a' within And petrifies the feeling"

A child that is cruel to animals, disdainful of their sufferings when in pursuit of his pleasure, cannot be trusted to be kind to a younger sister, a weaker companion, or a valued pet. Cruelty is a vice of the basest and most cowardly--a mark of the savage and criminal. Let the mother remember this, not only in her precepts, but in the example she gives her children. "Even the birds of the air," wrote the German critic Harnisch, "bear an accusation to their Creator against those who with wanton cruelty, destroy helpless innocence."