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About The Chemawa American (Chemawa, Or.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 1913)
32 THE CHEM AW A AM ERICAN AGRICULTURE FOR GRADES O U T L I N E D B Y A L B E R T H . G I L L E T T , Teacher o f Agriculture B IR D F R I E N D S Beloved of children, bards and sprint;. O birds, your perfect virtues bring. Your songs, your forms, your rhythmetic flight. Your manners for the heart’s delight. Nestle in hedge, or barn, or roof, Here weave your chamber water-proof. Forgive our harms, and condescend To man, as to a lubber friend. And, generous, teach his awkward race Courage and probity and grace.” As this is the last issue of the "American” for this school year, I feel it a matter of duty to speak of one of the important topics in the outline, "Bird Friends.” Indian boys, generally speaking, are destructive beings. Their forefathers were on the hunt to furnish food for the family. The killing of things seems to be in the very make-up of the boys, not for food, but for fun, as they call it. No bird can rest secure near the boys. A pebble from the bean-shooter either kills the bird or moves him on. The boy may be delighted while watching the cliffswal- lows build their nests under the roof of the dairy barn, but he seems to take greater delight a few days later in causing them to fall as he hurls rocks at them. As was remarked in the Memorial address, "Our schools teach the heads and let the hearts simply grow up untaught;” is too true to speak well of educational institutions. The same in true relative to public property. We are to educate the boys and girls, yet we are not success ful in their having any regard for public property. We see unecessary destruction on every hand. Bird life represents public property, and France has come to realize the fact, as she is nearly a birdless nation and is now paying the penalty of this wanton destruction by having her vineyards destroyed by grubs and vermin that the birds formerly kept in check. “The summer came, and all the birds were dead: The days were like hot coals: the very ground Was burned to ashes: in the orchard fed Myriads of caterpillars, and around The cultivated fields and garden beds Hosts of devouring insects crawled, and found No foe to check their march, till they had made The land a desert without leaf or shade.”
