Those of us who have known, by experience, in caring for wounded or sick birds, exactly what incessant watchfulness is necessary to keep them alive, realize how impossible it is that this care should be given them by the average purchaser. Birds born and reared in captivity, like the Canary, are the only ones that real humanity should keep behind bars. There is no more condemnable habit than taking nestlings of any kind, and trying to rear them, unless disaster overtakes the parents. Nominally, the traffic in caged wild birds has ceased; actually, it has not; nor will it until every bird-lover feels himself responsible for staying the hand that would rob the nest, whether it is that of the ignorant little pickaninny of the South, who climbs up the vine outside the window where you are wintering, and sees, in the four young Mockers, in the nest just under the sill, a prospective dollar; the child at home, who likes to experiment for a few days with pets, and then forgets them; or the wily dealer, who sells secretly what he dares not exhibit. No quarter to any class who make prisoners of the wild, outside of the zoölogical gardens or the few private outdoor aviaries, where the proper conditions exist. Any free citizen prefers death to loss of liberty, and even the most material mind will, at least, allow this human quality to Citizen Bird, while it proves that he or she who either cages or buys the captive wholly lacks the spiritual quality. Should we make prisoners of “The ballad-singers and the Troubadours, The street musicians of the heavenly city, The birds, who make sweet music for us all In our dark hours, as David did for Saul”? XX MIDWINTER BIRDS WINTER COMRADES Plume and go, ye summer folk Fly from Winter’s killing stroke, Bluebird, Sparrow, Thrush, and Swallow, Wild Geese from the marshes follow, Wood-dove from the lonesome hollow Rise and follow South—all follow! Now I greet ye, hardy tribes, Snowy Owl, and night-black Crow, Starling with your wild halloo; Blue Jay screaming like the wind, In the tree-tops gaunt and thinned; You in summer called “Bob-white” (Voice of far-off fields’ delight). Now among the barnyard brood Fearless, searching for your food; Nuthatch, Snowbird, Chickadee, Downy tapper on the tree; And you twittering Goldfinch drove (Masked in gray) that blithely rove Where the herby pastures show Tables set above the snow: And ye other flocks that ramble, Where the red hop trims the bramble, Or the rowan-berry bright And the scarlet haw invite— Winter comrades, well betide ye, Friendly trunk and hollow hide ye, Hemlock branches interlace, When the Northern Blast gives chase. —Edith M. Thomas.