The cause of this is very soon told. The French eat the birds. The commissioners, in their report, present some curious statistics respecting the extent to which the destruction of birds in France has of late been carried. They state 'that there are great numbers of professional huntsmen, who are accustomed to kill from one hundred to two hundred birds daily; a single child has been known to come home at night with one hundred birds' eggs; and it is also calculated and reported that the number of birds' eggs destroyed annually in France is between eighty millions and one hundred millions. The result is that the small birds in that country are actually dying out; some species have already disappeared, while others are rapidly diminishing.' These facts contain valuable suggestions to our own countrymen. In this instance, as in many such like, observation is a better and more profitable master than experience. Our farmers can increase the value of their estates, and bring pleasure and peace to their homes, by more special attention to the outward adornment of their dwellings; by cultivating a garden, planting orchards of the best selected fruit, and trees for shade, shelter, and ornament, about their farms and along the adjoining highway. He who plants a tree, thereby gives hostages to life, but he who cuts one down needlessly, is a Vandal, and deserves the execration of every honest man for all time. Learn not to value the bearded elm, 'the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,' the stalwart oak, or the beautiful maple, by cubic measure, but by the 'height of the great argument' they force upon us by their presence, their beauty, and their power. Plant for to-day, and for your children; plant 'for another age,' and thereby do 'a good office' to the coming generations of men. No man but is better for living in the presence of great trees. In one of those most delightful volumes of the _Spectator_, we find a paper, written by the pure and noble Joseph Addison, in which are well told the pleasures and profits of planting: 'It must,' he says, 'be confessed that this is none of those turbulent pleasures which are apt to gratify a man in the heats of youth; but if it be not so tumultuous, it is more lasting. Nothing can be more delightful than to entertain ourselves with prospects of our own making, and to walk under those shades which our own industry has raised. Amusements of this nature compose the mind, and lay at rest all those passions which are uneasy to the soul of man, besides that they naturally engender good thoughts, and dispose us to laudable contemplations.'