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.—Your mother and grandmother can remember the time when it wasn't thought to be so very wicked to rob birds' nests, or even to kill song birds for their pretty wings. Isn't that strange? But, in nearly every village in the land there was some wise, kind man or woman who knew these things to be not only very wicked but very foolish. If it had not been for these few, scattered bird-lovers, who protected the little feathered friends that sing to us so sweetly, and work for us so willingly, we would not have as many wild birds as we have today.

This is the story of one of these old-time bird-lovers and his bird-haunted garden. He was a country doctor. He lived in a village in the middle West, in a small white house with green shutters. In his large garden he had many beautiful trees, and the finest flowers and fruits and vegetables in the town, although he never seemed to take any more pains with them than his neighbors. People said he was lucky, or had the "knack" of growing things. But the wise doctor only smiled and said:

"I have all my little feathered friends to help me." Few people understood just what he meant by that.

As the years went by, and wild birds became fewer, the doctor's garden was almost the only place in the town where many of them nested. Then people went to the doctor's house, to see and to hear the birds they had driven from their own door yards. The dearest treat the doctor kept for his little human friends, was to invite a few of them at a time to a sunrise concert on his vine-covered side porch. There, as still as little mice, they could listen to the bird songs, look through the doctor's big field-glass, and watch the happy singers at work or play. Now and then, the quietest child of all was allowed to peep into a big knot-hole in a fence post, and look at Mama Bluebird sitting on her eggs.

That is the way in which one little girl learned to know and to love our wild song birds. Don't you want to go into the doctor's garden, and watch the birds as they come north in the spring? You can learn to know them by their songs and colors, their nests and babies. You can learn how they helped their good friend grow flowers and fruits and vegetables. And you can learn how he made them understand that they were wanted, and would be protected. If you know all these things you, too, can have the wild song birds for summer visitors wherever you live. They will come to farms and into sheltered gardens of houses in large towns, and into the parks of the very largest cities.