Fantasy Football Challenge - Football Fanatics Library

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Fantasy Football Challenge presents
Young Knights of the Empire

18 of 87

they have learnt that the human being, though strong _enough to_ hurt, them, is kind and gentle. They are quick to show that they appreciate such kindness. You know how your own dog half-curls himself round Wagging his tail and grinning with pleasure when he sees you; and also how your horse nuzzles you all over to find the sugar that he knows you are going to give him. So give animals all the kindness you can, and make their lives happy. Many boys are inclined to be cruel simply because they don't think--they are not yet manly enough--they are, as I said before, in the silly-ass stage. But a Scout who is manly and chivalrous towards people will at all times be the same towards animals. It is wonderful what pleasure you can get out of it in return, whether you train your dog to obey your slightest sign, or whether you tame a robin to be your friend. The other day I came across a proprietor of a garage who showed himself to be a good and kindly man because he had supplied the Scout troop of the town with a loft to use as a club-room. But he proved to me that he was a good man by taking me into his sitting-room and showing me his tame canary, which did every kind of trick at his command, and sang to him, answered his whistle, and came at his call and kissed him. Apart from the interest of training an animal in confinement, there is all the fun and adventure to be got out of stalking and watching animals and birds in the wild and learning their ways and customs. The more you do this, and the more you understand about how they are made and how they do their various works, the better you will understand the wonders of Nature and of the Creator. * * * * * THE RIGHT WAY TO GO BIRDS'-NESTING. A man who studies birds is called an ornithologist. Mark Twain, the amusing yet kind-hearted American writer, says: "There are fellows who write books about birds and love them so much that they'll go hungry and tired to find a new kind of bird--and kill it. "They are called 'ornithologers.' "I could have been an 'ornithologer' myself, because I always loved birds and creatures. And I started out to learn how to be one. I saw a bird sitting on a dead limb of a high tree, singing away with his head tilted back and his mouth open--and, before I thought, I fired my gun at him; his song stopped all suddenly, and he fell from the branch, limp like a rag, and I ran and picked him up--and he was dead. His body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like as if his neck was broke, and there was a white skin over his eyes, and one drop of red blood sparkled on the side of his head-and-laws! I couldn't see nothing for the tears." "I haven't ever murdered no creature since then that warn't doing me no harm--and I ain't agoing to neither." A good Scout is generally a good "ornithologer," as Mark Twain calls him. That is to say, he likes stalking birds and watching all that they do. He discovers, by watching them, where and how they build their nests. He does not, like the ordinary boy, want to go and rob them of their eggs, but he likes to watch how they hatch out their young and teach them to feed themselves and to fly. He gets to know every species of bird by its call and by its way of flying; and he knows which birds remain all the year round and which only come at certain seasons; and what kind of food they like best, and how they change their plumage, what sort of nests they build, where they build them, and what the eggs are like. A good many birds are almost dying out in Great Britain, because so many boys bag all their eggs when they find their nests. Birds'-nesting is very like big-game shooting--you look out in places that, as a hunter, you know are likely haunts of the birds you want; you watch the birds fly in and out and you find the nest. But you do not then go and destroy the nest and take all the eggs. If you are actually a collector, take one egg and leave the rest, and, above all, don't pull the nest about, otherwise the parent birds will desert it, and all those eggs, which might have developed into jolly young birds will be wasted. Far better than taking the eggs is to take a photograph, or to make a

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