Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/346

342 happy in the expected reward, only to receive shot instead of nuts and to fall dead at the hunters feet. Another day, near the foot of the western cliffs of San Clemente Island, a great dead sea-lion was floating on a mass of kelp. The Japanese fisherman said that, the day before, sportsmen had shot the sea-lion for the "fun of it." The call of the wild is a tempting voice, leading men back to nature. May the day come soon when many will respond to that call, but with the substitution of camera for gun, yielding better sport and in the end saving our fast vanishing native animals. Just as condemnable as killing animals for sport is the fashion which demands the slaughter of birds for their feathers. The story is familiar of how the beautiful plumes are taken from nesting egrets, and thus the millinery hunters not only kill the

parents in large numbers, but also leave the young birds to starve in the nest. Women who do not desire to share in such wanton destruction of bird life will adorn their hats with feathers from the ostrich and other domesticated birds, or with artificial flowers and ribbons.

The poetic insight is necessary for creative work in science as well as in literature. This gift enabled Darwin to construct a philosophy of nature, and Browning to portray the human heart, while in Goethe it was common source of inspiration for naturalist and poet. The imagination of the child should be cultivated, not suppressed. He should hear voices singing in the winds and hold communion with the dryad of the whispering woods and the Naiad of the babbling brook. The stories and songs of negroes and Indians, as gathered in books of folk-lore, constitute