Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/251

Rh protection are wanting in an appeal for the plants. Birds, high in the scale of animal life, with power to feel pain and pleasure, with food-seeking, home-making and young-protecting instincts, demand, as fellow creatures, freedom from cruelty. Efforts were first made to protect them as individuals, while the prevention of the destruction of species was a secondary consideration. Through the agricultural department of our government, knowledge of the great economic value of birds was disseminated, and this was a most effective means of in-



suring their protection. Through the same department people learned of the vast value of our trees to preserve which a public sentiment was created. Laws were then passed for their protection, and we now have a distinct forestry policy.

To most persons our wild plants are only things of beauty, common property to be admired or destroyed at will and, therefore, can not be preserved by the same petitions as were made in behalf of the birds. The appeal for the plants is much more difficult and must be at first