We cannot afford to overlook the esthetic side of this question. How much of our pleasure and happiness do we owe the birds directly for their intensely busy lives, the neatness and beauty of their dress, the perpetual joy of their songs? Can you imagine a world without birds? Are the returned warmth and the green vegetation all that make the summer months more pleasant than the winter season ? Rob the tropics of their birds and you rob them of their heart. Pasadena, California, is a bird paradise, but take away its mocking birds, its orioles, its towhees, its gorgeous humming birds, and the many other birds which enliven ,every lawn, and you have taken away one of its chief charms.

But it is not simply that we are entertained by the birds, nor even that we are pleased with their neatness and beauty.

Where their lives touch ours we feel an uplifting influence. We are better fitted for the service which it is our privilege to render to the world by the touch of the bird life. Our horizon is broadened beyond the self-interest, the egoistic, to the altruistic conception of life. We cannot live in the presence of these creatures so full of life without being spurred to more earnest effort ourselves. When we fail to see in the world of nature about us what it is our privilege to see we are losing that much of life. Let us open our eyes to all the influences that may shape our lives toward best living.