contrived from the beach, and the quay, and fisher’s boat, and the inn’s fireside, and the tradesman’s shop, and shepherd’s walk, and smuggler’s hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and poetry of his own.” Sir Walter Scott long ago declared: “The best part of every man’s education is that which he gives himself.” This was the nature of the school system in Ohio. The young population grew up among the beasts and birds and trees; each of which in turn served as teacher. Not only the burley bear and nimble deer, but even the pestiferous vermin, were aiders and abettors in education and the rise of the new civilization. The coons, the foxes, the beavers, the otters, minks, muskrats, and skunk, carried _legal tenders_ with them and furnished the chief circulating medium known to the country for many years. With the trained dog, the boys in the wilderness were enabled to secure pelts to send to Boston for books, which erected the superstructure of more great men than can be found as the production of any other state or country in a single century. And to-day the intelligent squirrel hunter makes a respectful bow to the little animals for the honorable part they so successfully performed in creating the new species and placing Ohio permanently in the lead of a nation of the best informed people in the world. BIRDS. “For wheresoe’er your murmuring tremors thrill The woody twilight, there man’s heart hath still Conferred a spirit breath, and heard a ceaseless hymn.” The number of species of birds found at various times in Ohio amount to two hundred and ninety-two; while the number breeding in the state is placed at one hundred and twenty-nine; and if the probable summer residents are counted the number would be increased to one hundred and seventy-one. An eminent ornithologist says in a recent work: “To cast the horoscope of the bird-life of the future is uncertain work, and perhaps without profit; but the stars certainly predict utter extermination of the finest of all game birds--the wild turkey--and the diminution to the point of extermination of the ruffed grouse, the quail, the wood duck and wild pigeon.”[20] Game birds as well as song birds would from natural causes alone diminish in number, as their selected homes or breeding places become destroyed by clearing up the country. But in addition to this, the unseasonable and inhuman destruction by means of firearms has become so alarmingly great as to foretell that at no distant day most of the desirable species of birds that are permanent residents will have been destroyed.