[We heartily sympathise with the following eloquent and beautiful appeal for the little feathered creatures of the air, from our fair unknown correspondent in New-England. If there is any common sight more truly mean and contemptible in our eyes than another, it is that of a biped, with a gun on his shoulder, making game of blue birds and sparrows. And yet our community is, for the most part, callous to the commission of the sin. We recommend such to the perusal of the following, and pray that their consciences may awaken. Ed.]

Mr. Downing - I did not think to have trespassed on your kindness again, or ventured before so wide an audience, even behind my friendly veil. But this time my errand is not to my own sex. I am figuratively on my knees to the gentlemen. Not to any, however, who have a right to smile at my petitioning humility. I come as a memorialist before the law makers of our country, to beseech them for my friends, my companions, my darlings, the little birds. Even as I write, the song of a blue-bird, shivering in this untimely snow, seems in its plaintive cheerfulness to encourage my undertaking. Gentlemen of the legislatures! past, present, and to come, you are very good to the eatable fowls of heaven; woodcock, snipe, partriges, quails, all feel the weight of your protecting influence, but who cares for the singing birds? If they were nightingales, indeed, and their tongues a "lordly dish," as once they were to the Roman epicures, the friendless things might hope for a reprieve; but now they sing their gentle life away, without confidence or hope in its endurance.

Day-by-day, boys, who ought rather to be barrelled up with a spelling-book till they come to years of discretion, shoulder their old fowling pieces and stroll the fields with some attendant cur, to try how many dear, harmless, happy little creatures, they can deprive of all they possess, their life; indeed, I grow indignant at the thought. Here the blue-birds sing peacefully, and the song-sparrow warbles with confident sweetness, for no wandering biped comes within these bounds unquestioned by a great dog, happily gifted with a bark much beyond his bite. But in the fields about, I see almost daily one of these little stalking Herods, bent on the murder of these next loveliest thing to children, the innocents of dumb creation. I know very well, they seem to you comparatively useless; they don't do anything but sing. Neither does Jenny Lind! Will you call the fair Swede a useless unit in creation? Is it no good to awaken in so many tired and dusty hearts the breath of hope, and the pulses of nature? And the birds are the poor man's orchestra, the country-girl's concert, the interpreters of earth's great laboring heart and sealed lips. Theirs is an incessant psalm of gratitude, always harmonious with the deep chorus of the inanimate music of creation.

They teach us the very lessons of heaven, hope, faith, charity. They are the first to celebrate the slow steps of spring; the last to leave us in the advent of frosty winter; the heralds of rain to the thirsty earth; the prophets of sunshine to the frozen ground. They are the poets of those flowers that live and die unseen of man; and in their tiny love songs tell us, who listen, fairy tales of desolate water-lilies, and gorgeous painted-cups that the summer-moth has deserted.

Beside, they eat up bugs! Am I coming to common-sense now? I avow it as ray firm belief, that all the discussions about the curculio which vex the horticultural soul from day to day, would come to a peaceful end if there were birds enough to eat the creatures up.

Garden teem with plums, apricots, and peaches, of every kind and color? Was the curcu-lio made expressly for the vexation of later days, or is it that the feathered toll-gatherers are gone too: and to use your own language, oh conscript fathers! "the supply exceeds the demand" of every hug that caters for itself in our thriftless orchards.

I should not dare to raise my feeble voice in this behalf through any other medium than the Horticulturist; but I know my audience here are the forest trees, as it were, of the land. Sturdy, sensible, culturers of the soil. Educated, intelligent possessors of gardens and green-houses. Electors, if not members, of the legislative bodies. And I am supported by the wide sympathies of every pomological convention and fruit-grower in the land. Strong in this triple shield, I ask you, assembling citizens of this free and fertile country, to have regard in your laws to the birds. Do not let them be slaughtered for the wanton pleasure of school-boys, or the improvement in shooting of the older, but scarce wiser men. Throw around their wind-swung cradle, the sheltering film of legal pains and penalties. Guard their untried wings with fines and prosecutions, to the disturbing and destroying hand. Let them fairly grow up, at the least. Somewhat encourage the song and appetite that give you pleasure, and the insects an end. If it please you to permit their shooting after a certain date, yet let them arrive to some strength and flight.

A hand of greater power and tenderness than is apparent to you, has given them means of escape; a pure air and wide sky open before them; and if the leaden message overtake even their rapid pinions, they shall not fall unnoted or uncared for. It is not life, or food, or any other alms, they ask from human compassion; but merely such protection to their existence as is most for human benefit. My dear sirs! care for the birds a little, and they shall care for you! Your fruit shall ripen in August suns. Tour plantations shall echo to songs that will be vocal gratitude to your conscience. And all lovers of the woods and fields will bless you in their heart for the little comrades of their pleasure. Last and least, you will have, though it be of faint and scorned value, the sweetest perfume of thanks that lies folded away in the heart of a Wild Flower.

In the Bushes, March 10,1851.