Small-calibre rifles are becoming alarmingly common in the hands of boys. Parents must do their duty in the training of their boys against bird-shooting! It is a very serious matter.  A million boys who roam the fields with small rifles without having been instructed in protection, can destroy an appalling number of valuable birds in the course of a year.  Some parents are so slavishly devoted to their children that they wish them to do everything they please, and be checked in nothing.  Such parents constitute one of the pests of society, and a drag upon the happiness of their own children!  It is now the bounden duty of each parent to teach each one of his or her children that the time has come when the resources of nature, and especially wild life, must be conserved.  To permit boys to grow up and acquire guns without this knowledge is very wrong.

THE DUTY OF TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS.—­A great deal of “nature study” is being taught in the public schools of the United States.  That the young people of our land should be taught to appreciate the works of nature, and especially animal life and plant life, is very desirable.  Thus far, however, there is a screw loose in the system, and that is the shortage in definite, positive instruction regarding individual duty toward the wild creatures, great and small.  Along with their nature studies all our school children should be taught, in the imperative mood: 

1.  That it is wrong to disturb breeding birds, or rob birds’ nests;

2.  That it is wrong to destroy any harmless living creature not properly classed as game, except it be to preserve it in a museum;

3.  That it is no longer right for civilized man to look upon wild game as necessary food; because there is plenty of other food, and the remnant of game can not withstand slaughter in that basis;

4.  That the time has come when it is the duty of every good citizen to take an active, aggressive part in preventing the destruction of wild life, and in promoting its preservation;

5.  That every boy and girl over twelve years of age can do something in this cause, and finally,

6.  That protection and encouragement will bring back the almost vanished birds.

We call upon all boards of education, all principals of schools and all teachers to educate our boys and girls, constantly and imperatively, along those lines.  Teachers, do not say to your pupils,—­“It is right and nice to protect birds,” but say:—­“It is your Duty to protect all harmless wild things, and you must do it!”

In a good cause, there is great virtue in “Must.”

Really, we are losing each year an immense amount of available wild-life protection.  The doctrine of imperative individual duty never yet has been taught in our schools as it should be taught.  A few teachers have, indeed, covered this ground; but I am convinced that their proportion is mighty small.