There is a singing in the summer air, The blue and brown moths flutter o'er the grass, The stubble bird is creaking in the wheat, And, perched upon the honeysuckle hedge, Pipes the green linnet. Oh! the golden world-- The star of life on every blade of grass, The motion and joy on every bough, The glad feast everywhere, for things that love The sunshine, and for things that love the shade. THE FEATHER CRUSADE. E. K. M. Just as the Audubon societies and the appeals of humanitarians in general have had some effect in lessening the demand for the aigrette for millinery purposes, and their banishment, as officially announced, from the helmets of the British army, there springs up a new fashion which, if generally adopted, will prove very discouraging--especially to the birds. "She made a decided sensation last evening at the opera," says Miss Vanity's fond mamma. "Those blackbirds with outspread wings at either side of her head were simply fetching. They drew every lorgnette and every eye in the house upon her. Not a woman of fashion, or otherwise, I venture to say, will appear at a public function here-after without a pair of stuffed birds in her hair." A melancholy outlook truly, though as an onlooker expressed it, the effect of the spreading wings was vastly more grotesque than beautiful. The poor little blackbirds! Their destruction goes on without abatement. "I like the hat," said a gentle-looking little lady in a fashionable millinery establishment the other day, "but," removing it from her head, "those blackbirds must be removed and flowers put in their place." "A member of the Audubon Society, probably," queried the attendant, respectfully. "No," was the answer, "but for years the birds have been welcome visitors at our country place, great flocks of blackbirds, especially, making their homes in our trees. This year, and indeed the last, but few appeared, and we have in consequence no love for the hunters and little respect for the women who, for vanity's sake, make their slaughter one of commercial necessity and greed." 'Tis said fashion is proof against the appeals of common sense or morality, and one must accept the statement as true when, in spite of all that has been said upon the subject, the Paris journals announce that "birds are to be worn more than ever and blouses made entirely of feathers are coming into fashion." The use of bird skins in Paris for one week represent the destruction of one million three hundred thousand birds; in London the daily importation ranges from three hundred to four hundred thousand. It is honestly asserted that, in the height of the season, fifty thousand bird skins are received in New York City daily.