From infancy I have lived among them, have watched them with the most profound reverence and love, respected their rights, adored their beauty and their song, and I could no more injure a bird than I could hurt a child. No woman would if she knew it. The family life of most birds is a lesson to men and women. But how few people have had the privilege of watching that sweet life; of knowing how precious and sacred it is; how the little beings guard their nests with almost human wisdom and cherish their young with faithful, careful, self-sacrificing love! If women only knew these things there is not one in the length and breadth of the land, I am happy to believe, who would be cruel enough to encourage this massacre of the innocents by wearing any precious rifled plume of theirs upon her person. * * * * * Extract from Henry Ward Beecher's letter to Bonner on the death of the Auburn horse: "Ought he not to have respect in death, especially as he has no chance hereafter? But are we so certain about that? Does not moral justice require that there should be some green pasture-land hereafter for good horses--say old family horses that have brought up a whole family of their master's children and never run away in their lives; doctors' horses that stand unhitched, hours, day and night, never gnawing the post or fence, while the work of intended humanity goes on; omnibus horses that are jerked and pulled, licked and kicked, ground up by inches on hard, sliding pavements, overloaded and abused; horses that died for their country on the field of battle, or wore out their constitutions in carrying noble generals through field and flood, without once flinching from the hardest duty; or _my_ horse, old Charley, the first horse that I ever owned; of racing stock, large, raw-boned, too fiery for anybody's driving but my own, and as docile to my voice as my child was?" [Illustration: POLISHED WOODS. CHICAGO: A. W. MUMFORD, PUBLISHER. Hungarian Ash. White Walnut. Cherry. Bird's-eye Maple. Mahogany. Oak.] FINISHED WOODS. ASH.--This name is applied to four species of forest trees. Most of the species are indigenous in North America, and some are found in Europe and Asia. The majority of these trees are large, affecting shady and moist places, banks of rivers, or marshes. The wood is tough and elastic, and is used by wheel-wrights, carriage-makers, and ship-builders. The Hungarian species is a favorite with cabinet-makers.