On the uplands, where the meadow lark starts out of the grass with a sharp, defiant "zeet!" and speeds away on his steady game-like flight, remember before you stop it, or try to, of how little account he is when brought to bag; and how when the weary days of winter had passed, his cheery voice welcomed the coming spring, a little later than the robin's, a little earlier than the flicker's cackle; and what an enlivening dot of color his yellow breast made where he strutted in the dun, bare meadows. In some States the woodpeckers are unprotected and are a mark for every gunner. Their galloping flight tempts the ambitious young shooter to try his skill, but they are among the best friends of the arboriculturist and the fruit-grower, for though some of them steal cherries and peck early apples, and one species sucks the sap of trees, they are the only birds that search out and kill the insidious, destructive borer. In some States, too, the hare is unprotected by any law, and it is common custom to hunt it, even so late as April, for the mere sake of killing, apparently; or perhaps the charm of the hound's music, which makes the butchery of Adirondack deer so delightful a sport to some, adds a zest to the slaughter of these innocents--though, be it said, there is no comparison in the marksmanship required. Alive, the northern hare is one of the most harmless of animals; dead, he is, in the opinion of most people, one of the most worthless; so worthless that hunters frequently leave the result of all their day's "sport" in the woods where they were killed. Yet the hare is legitimate game, and should be hunted as such, and only in proper seasons, and not be ruthlessly exterminated. A woodland stroll is the pleasanter if one sees a hare there in his brown summer suit, or white as the snow about him in his winter furs. Where there are no statute laws for the protection of game and harmless creatures not so classed, an unwritten law of common sense, common decency, and common humanity should be powerful enough to protect all these. The fox is an outlaw; it is every one's legal right to kill him whenever and however he may, and yet wherever the fox is hunted with any semblance of fair play, whether in New England with gun and hound, or elsewhere with horse and hound, the man who traps a fox, or kills one unseasonably, or destroys a vixen and her cubs, bears an evil reputation. A sentiment as popular and as potent ought to prevail to protect those that, though harmless, are as unshielded by legislative enactments as the fox, and much less guarded by natural laws and inborn cunning. XXXII THE SKUNK Always and everywhere in evil repute and bad odor, hunted, trapped, and killed, a pest and a fur-bearer, it is a wonder that the skunk is not exterminated, and that he is not even uncommon.