There is to-day in Africa a vast reserve supply of grand game. It inhabits regions that are either unknown, or most difficult to penetrate. As a species in point, consider the okapi. Only the boldest and most persistent explorers ever have set foot in its tangled and miasmatic haunts. It may be twenty years before a living specimen can be brought out. The gorilla and the chimpanzee are so well protected by the density of their jungles that they never can be exterminated—until the natives are permitted to have all the firearms that they desire! When that day arrives, it is "good-night" to all the wild life that is large enough to eat or to wear.

The quagga and the blaubok became extinct before the world learned that their existence was threatened! The giant eland, the sable antelope, the greater kudu, the bontebok, blessbok, the mountain and Burchell zebras, all the giraffes save that of Nigeria, the big waterbucks, the nyala, the sitatunga, the bongo, and the gerenuk—all will go in the same way, everywhere outside the game preserves. The buffalo, zebra and rhinoceros are especially marked for destruction, as annoyances to colonists. You who read of the killing of these species to-day will read of their total disappearance to-morrow. So long as the hunting of them is permitted, their ultimate disappearance is fixed and certain. It is not the way of rifle-shooting English colonists to permit herds of big game to run about merely to be looked at.

Naturally, the open plains of Africa, and the thin forests of the plateau regions, will be the first to lose their big game. In the gloomy fastnesses of the great equatorial forests, and other really dense forests wherever found, the elephants, the Derby eland, the bongo, the okapi, the buffaloes (of three species), the bush-pigs, the bushbucks and the forest-loving antelopes generally will live, for possibly one hundred years,—or until the natives secure plenty of modern firearms and ammunition. Whenever and wherever savages become supplied with rifles, then it is time to measure each big-game animal for its coffin.

The elephants of the great equatorial forest westward of the lake region will survive long after the last eastern elephant has bitten the dust. The pygmy elephant of the lower Congo region (Elephas pumilio) will be the last African elephant species to disappear—because it inhabits dense miasmatic jungles, its tusks are of the smallest size, and it has the least commercial value.

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CHAPTER XIX

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF THE GAME OF ASIA

After a successful survival of man's influence through two thousand years, at last the big game of India has made a good start on the road to vanishment. Up to 1870 it had held its own with a tenacity that was astonishing. In 1877, I found the Ganges—Jumna dooab, the Animallai Hills, the Wynaad Forest and Ceylon literally teeming with herds of game. The Animallais in particular were a hunter's paradise. In each day of hunting, large game of some kind was a certainty. The Nilgiri Hills had been quite well shot out, but in view of the very small area and open, golf-links character of the whole top of that wonderful sky plateau, that was no cause for wonderment.

In those days no native shikaree owned and operated a gun,—or at the most very, very few of them did. If a rogue elephant, a man-eating tiger or a nasty leopard became a public nuisance, it was a case for a sahib to come and doctor it with a .577 double-barreled express rifle, worth $150 or more; and the sahibs had shooting galore.

I think that no such great wild-life sights as those of the plateau regions of Africa ever were seen in southern Asia. Conditions there are different, and usually the game is widely scattered. The sambar deer and muntjac of the dense forests, the axis of the bamboo glades, the thameng deer of the Burmese jungles, the sladang, or gaur, of the awful Malay tangle, and the big cats and canines will last long and well. The ibexes, markhors, tahr and all the wild sheep eventually will be shot out by sportsmen who are "sheep crazy." The sheep and goats of Asia will disappear soon after the plains animals of Africa, because no big game that lives in the open can much longer endure the modern, inexpensive long-range rifles of deadly accuracy and limitless repetition of fire.

Eventually, I fear that by some unlucky turn of Fortune's wheel all the native hunters of Asia will obtain rifles; and when they do, we soon will see the end of the big game.

Even to-day we find that the primitive conditions of 1877 have been greatly changed. In the first place, about every native shikaree (hunter) owns a rifle, at a cost of about $25; and many other natives possess guns, and assume to hunt with them. The logical conclusion of this is more hunting and less game. The development of the country has reduced the cover for game. New roads and railways have made the game districts easily accessible, and real sportsmen are now three or four times as numerous as they were in 1877.

At Toonacadavoo, in the Animallai Hills where thirty-five years ago there modestly nestled on the ridge beside the river only Forest Ranger Theobold's bungalow, built of mud and covered with grass thatch and bamboo rats, there is now a regular hill station lighted by electricity, a modern sanatorium high up on the bluff, a club, golf links, and other modern improvements. In my day there were exactly four guns on the Animallais. Now there are probably one hundred; and it is easy to guess how much big game remains on the Delectable Mountains in comparison with the golden days of 1877. I should say that there is now only one game animal for every twenty-five that were there in my day.

I am told that it is like that all over India. Beyond question, the gun-sellers and gun-users have been busy there, as everywhere else. The game of India is on the toboggan slide, and the old days of abundance have gone forever.

The first fact that strikes us in the face is the impending fate of the great Indian rhinoceros, an animal as wonderful as the Titanothere or the Megatherium. It is like a gift handed down to us straight out of the Pleistocene age, a million years back. The British paleontologists to-day marvel at Elephas ganesa, and by great labor dig his bones out of the Sewalik rocks, but what one of them all has yet made a move to save Rhinoceros indicus from the quick extermination that soon will be his portion unless he is accorded perpetual and real protection from the assaults of man?

Let the mammalogists of the world face this fact. The available cover of the Indian rhinoceros is alarmingly decreasing, throughout Assam and Bengal where the behemoth of the jungle has a right to live. It is believed that the few remaining rhinos are being shot much faster then they are breeding; and what will be the effect of this upon an animal that requires fourteen years to reach full maturity? To-day, the most wonderful hoofed mammal of all Asia is booked for extermination, and unless very radical measures for its preservation are at once carried into effect, it is probable that twenty years more will see the last Indian rhino go down to rise no more. One remedy would be a good, ample rhinoceros preserve; and another, the most absolute and permanent protection for the species, all along the line. Half-way measures will not suffice. It is time to ring in a general alarm.

During the past eighteen years, only three specimens of that species have come out of India for the zoological gardens and parks of the world, and I think there are only five in captivity, all told.

We are told that in India now the natives are permitted to have about all the firearms they can pay for. Naturally, in a country containing over 300,000,000 people this is a deadly thing. Of course there are shooting regulations, many of them; but their enforcement is so imperfect that it is said that the natives are attacking the big game on all sides, with deadly effect. I fear it is utterly impossible for the Indian government to put enough wardens into the field to watch the doings of the grand army of native poachers.

Fortunately, the Indian native,—unlike the western frontiersman,—does not contend that he owns the big game, or that "all men are born free and equal." At the same time, he means to have his full share of it, to eat, and to sell in various forms for cash. Even in India, the sale-of-game dragon has reared its head, and is to-day in need of being scotched with an iron hand.

When I received direct from a friend in the native state of Kashmir a long printed circular setting forth the hunting laws and game-protective measures of that very interesting principality, it gave me a shock. It was disquieting to be thus assured that the big game of Kashmir has disappeared to such an extent that strong protective measures are necessary. It was as if the Chief Eskimo of Etah had issued a strong proclamation for the saving of the musk-ox.

In Kashmir, the destruction of game has become so serious that a Game Preservation Department has been created, with the official staff that such an organization requires. The game laws are printed annually, and any variations from them may be made only by the authority of the Maharajah himself. Up to date, eight game preserves have been created, having a total area of about thee hundred square miles. In addition to these, there are twelve small preserves, each having an area of from twenty-five to fifty square miles. By their locations, these seem to provide for all the species of big game that are found in Kashmir,—the ibex, two forms of markhor, the tahr. Himalayan bighorn sheep, burrhel and goral.

In our country we have several states that are very large, very diversified in surface, and still inhabited by large game. Has any one of those states created a series of game preserves even half way comparable with those of Kashmir? I think not. Montana has made a beginning with two preserves,—Snow Creek and the Pryor Mountains,—but beside the splendid series of Kashmir they are not worthy of serious mention.

And then following closely in the wake of that document came a lengthy article in the "Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London," by E.C. Stebbing, in which a correspondent of the Indian Field clearly sets forth the fact that the big game of the Himalayas now is menaced by a peril new to our consideration, but of a most deadly character. Hear him:

"In this inventory (of game destroyers in India), the Gurkha soldier does not find a place, for he belongs to a class which he amply fills by himself with his small but very important personality. He deserves separate notice. From the banks of the Sarda on the frontier of Nepal, to the banks of the Indus, the battalions of these gallant little men are scattered in cantonments all along the outer spurs of the Himalayan range. In seven or eight of these locations there are at least 14,000 of these disciplined warriors, who, in the absence of opportunities for spilling human blood legitimately, are given a free hand for slaughtering wild animals, along five-hundred miles of the best hunting grounds of Upper India."

Now, since those facts must be true as reported, do they not in themselves constitute a severe arraignment of the Indian government? Why should that state of game slaughter endure, when a single executive order to the C.O. of each post would effectually stop it?

In the making of game preserves, or "sanctuaries" as they are called out there, the Government of India has shown rare and commendable diligence. The total number is too great for enumeration here. The native state of Mysore has seven, and the Nilgiri Hills have sanctuaries aggregating about 100,000 acres in area. In the Wynaad Forest, my old hunting-grounds at Mudumallay have been closed to bison shooting, because of the alarming decrease of bison (gaur) through shooting and disease. The Kundah Forest Reserve has been made a partial game preserve, but the door might as well have been left wide open as so widely ajar.

In eastern Bengal and Assam, several game preserves have been created. On the whole, by the diligence and thoroughness with which sanctuaries, as they are termed, have been created quite generally throughout India, it is quite evident that the government and the sportsmen of India have become thoroughly alarmed by the great decrease of the game, and the danger of the extermination of species. In the past India has been the finest and best-stocked hunting-ground of all Asia, quite beyond compare, and the destruction of her once-splendid fauna of big game would be a zoological calamity.

Tibet.—As yet, Tibet offers free hunting, without legal let or hindrance, to every sportsman who can climb up to her lofty, wind-swept and whizzing-cold plateau. The man who hunts the Ovis poli, superb creature though it be, pays in full for his trophies. The ibex of the south help out the compensatory damages, but even with that, the list of species available in southern Tibet is painfully small. The Mitchell takin can be reached from China, via Chungking, after a long, hard journey, over Consul Mason Mitchell's trail; but the takin is about the only large hoofed game available.

The Altai Mountains, of western China, contain the magnificent Siberian argali, the grandfather of all sheep species, whose horns must be seen to be believed. Through a quest for that species the Russian military authorities played upon Mr. George L. Harrison and his comrade a very grim and unsportsmanlike joke. At the frontier military post, on the Russo-Chinese border, the two Americans were courteously halted, hospitably entertained, and prevented from going into the argali-infested mountains that loomed up before them only a few miles away! The Russian officers said:

"Sheep? Why, if you really want sheep, we will send out some of our brave soldiers to shoot some for you; but there is no need for you to take the trouble to go after them!"

After Mr. Harrison and his comrade had spent $5,000, and traveled half way around the world for those sheep, that is in brief the story of how the cup of Tantalus was given them by the Russians, actually at their goal! As spoil-sports, those Russian officers were the champions of the world.

Seven hundred miles southeastward of the Altai Mountains of western China, guarded by the dangerous hostility of savage native tribes, there exists and awaits the scientific explorer, according to report, an undiscovered wild horse. The Bicolored Wild Horse is black and white, and joy awaits the zoologist or sportsman who sees it first. Evidently it will not soon be exterminated by modern rifles.

The Impenetrable Forests.—Although the mountains of central Asia will in time be cleared of their big game,—when by hook and by crook the natives secure plenty of modern firearms,—there are places in the Far East that we know will contain big game forever and a day. Take the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Sumatra as examples.

Mr. C. William Beebe, who recently has visited the Far East, has described how the state of Selangor, between Malacca and Penang, has taken on many airs of improvement since 1878, and sections of Sarawak Territory are being cut down and burned for the growing of rubber. Despite this I am trying to think that those developments menace the total volume of the wild life of those regions but little. I wonder if those tangled, illimitable, ever-renewing jungles yet know that their faces have been scratched. White men never will exterminate the big game of the really dense jungles of the eastern tropics; but with enough axes, snares, guns and cartridges the natives may be able to accomplish it!

In Malayana there are some jungles so dense, so tangled with lianas and so thorny with Livistonias and rattan that nothing larger than a cat can make way through them. There are thousands of square miles so boggy, so swampy, so dark, gloomy and mosquito-ridden that all men fear them and avoid them, and in them rubber culture must be impossible. In those silent places the gaur, the rhino, the Malay sambar, the clouded leopard and the orang-utan surely are measurably safe from the game-bags and market gunners of the shooting world. It is good to think that there is an equatorial belt of jungle clear around the world, in Central and South America as well as in the old World, in which there will be little extermination in our day, except of birds for the feather market. But the open plains, open mountains, and open forests of Asia and Australasia are in different case. Eventually they will be "shot out."

China, all save Yunnan and western Mongolia, is now horribly barren of wild life. Can it ever be brought back? We think it can not. The millions of population are too many; and except in the great forest tracts, the spread of modern firearms will make an end of the game. Already the pheasants are being swept out of China for the London market, and extinction is staring several species in the face. On the whole, the pheasants of the Old World are being hit hard by the rubber-planting craze. Mr. Beebe declares that owing to the inrush of aggressive capital, the haunts of many species of pheasants are being denuded of all their natural cover, and some mountain species that are limited to small areas are practically certain to be exterminated at an early date.

DESTRUCTION OF ANIMALS FOR FUR.—In the far North, only the interior of Kamchatka seems to be safe from the iron heel of the skin-hunter. A glance at the list of furs sold in London last year reveals one or two things that are disquieting. The total catch of furs for the year 1911 is enormous,—considering the great scarcity of wild life on two continents. Incidentally it must be remembered that every trapper carries a gun, and in studying the fur list one needs no help in trying to imagine the havoc wrought with firearms on the edible wild life of the regions that contributed all that fur. I have been told by trappers that as a class, trappers are great killers of game.

In order that the reader may know by means of definite figures the extent to which the world is being raked and combed for fur-bearing animals, we append below a statement copied from the Fur News Magazine for November, 1912, of the sales of the largest London fur house during the past two years.

With varying emotions we call attention to the wombat of Australia, 3,841; grebe, 51,261, and house cat, 92,407. Very nearly all the totals of Lampson & Co. for each species are much lower for the sales of 1912 than for those of 1911. Is this fact significant of a steady decline?

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FURS SOLD BY C.M. LAMPSON & Co., LONDON

Totals for Totals for 1911, Skins 1912, Skins Raccoon 354,057 215,626 Musquash (Muskrat) 3,382,401 2,937,150 Musquash, Black 78,363 60,000 Skunk 1,310,185 979,612 Cat, Civet 329,180 229,155 Opossum, American 1,011,824 948,189 Mink 183,574 100,951 Marten 29,881 26,895 Fox, Red 58,900 40,300 Fox, Cross 1,294 1,569 Fox, Silver 761 590 Fox, Grey 43,909 32,471 Fox, Kit 30,278 35,222 Fox, White 16,709 13,341 Fox, Blue 3,137 1,778 Otter 17,399 13,899 Sea Otter 328 202 Cat, Wild, etc 38,870 29,740 Cat, House 92,407 65,641 Lynx 2,424 5,144 Fisher 1,918 656 Badger 16,338 15,325 Beaver 21,137 17,036 Bear 16,851 13,377 Wolf 65,893 74,535 Wolverine 1,530 1,172 Hair Seal, Dry 6,455 5,378 Grebe 51,261 19,571 Fur Seal, Dry 897 1,453 Sable, Russian 10,285 8,972 Kolinsky 138,921 120,933 Marten, Baum 1,853 1,481 Marten, Stone 7,504 6,331 Fitch 26,731 20,400 Ermine 328,840 248,295 Squirrel 976,395 707,710 Saca, etc. 40,982 13,599 Chinchilla, Real 6,282 11,457 Chinchilla, Bastard 7,533 8,145 Marten, Japanese 26,005 3,294 Sable, Japanese 1,429 52 Fox, Japanese 60,831 13,725 Badger, Japanese 183 2,949 Opossum, Australian 1,613,799 1,782,364 Wallaby, Australian 1,003,820 540,608 Kangaroo, Australian 21,648 16,193 Wombat, Australian 3,841 1,703 Fox, Red, Australian 60,435 40,724

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CHAPTER XX

THE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN THE FAR EAST[G] BY C. WILLIAM BEEBE Curator of Birds, New York Zoological Park

[Footnote G: The observations which furnished this valuable chapter were made by Mr. Beebe in 1911 while conducting an expedition in southern Asia, Borneo and Java for the purpose of studying in life and nature all the members of the Pheasant Family inhabiting that region. The results of these studies and collections will shortly appear in a very complete monograph of the Phasianidae.—W.T.H.]

In chapter XIII, treating of the "Extermination of Birds for Women's Hats," Dr. Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic after it enters the brokers' hands, and has proved conclusively that the plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds. We may trace the course of the plumes and feathers backward through the tightly-packed bales and boxes in the holds of the vessels to the ports of the savage lands whence they were shipped; then to the skilful, dark hands of Mexican peon, Venezuelan Indian, African negro or Asiatic Chinaman or Malay, who stripped the skin from the flesh; and finally to the jungle or mountain side or terai where the bird gave up its life to blowpipe, cross-bow, blunderbuss or carefully set snare.

In various trips to Mexico, Venezuela and other countries in the tropics of the New World I have seen many such scenes, but not until I had completed a seventeen months' expedition in search of pheasants, through some twenty wild countries of Asia and the East Indies, did I realize the havoc which is being wrought week by week everywhere on the globe. While we were absent even these few months from the great centers of civilization, tremendous advances had been made in air-ships and the thousand and one other modern phases of human development, but evolution in the world of Nature as we observed it was only destructive—a world-wide katabolism—a retrogression often discernible from month to month. We could scarcely repeat the trip and make the same observations upon pheasants, so rapidly is this group of birds approaching extinction.

The causes of this destruction of wild life are many and diverse, and resemble one another only in that they all emanate from mankind. To the casual traveller the shooting and trapping of birds for millinery purposes at first seems to hold an insignificant place among the causes. But this is only because in many of the larger ports, the protective laws are more or less operative and the occupation of the plume hunter is carried on in secret ways. But it is as far-reaching and insidious as any; and when we add to the actual number of birds slain, the compound interest of eggs grown cold, of young birds perishing slowly from hunger, of the thousands upon thousands of birds which fall wounded or dead among the thick tropical jungle foliage and are lost, the total is one of ghastly proportions.

Not to weaken my argument with too many general statements, let me take at once some concrete cases. First, that of the Himalayan pheasants and game-birds. In a recent interesting article by E.P. Stebbing[H] the past, present and hoped-for future of game birds and animals in India is reviewed. Unfortunately, however, most of the finest creatures in Asia live beyond the border of the British sphere of influence, and though within sight, are absolutely beyond reach of civilized law. The heart of the Himalayas,—the haunts of some of the most beautiful birds in the world, the tragopans, the blood and impeyan pheasants—lies within the limits of Nepal, a little country which time and time again has bade defiance to British attacks, and still maintains its independence. From its northern border Mt. Everest looks down from its most exalted of all earthly summits and sees valley after valley depleted of first one bird and then another. I have seen and lived with Nepalese shepherds who have nothing to do month after month but watch their flocks. In the lofty solitudes time hangs heavy on their hands, and with true oriental patience they weave loop after loop of yak-hair snares, and then set them, not in dozens or scores, but in hundreds and thousands up and down the valleys.

[Footnote H: "Game Sanctuaries and Game Protection in India," Proc. Zool. Soc., London, 1912. pp. 23-35.]

In one locality seven great valleys had been completely cleared of pheasants, only a single pair of tragopans remaining; and from one of these little brown men I took two hundred nooses which had been prepared for these lone survivors. In these cases, the birds were either cooked and eaten at once, or sold to some passing shepherd or lama for a few annas. But in other parts of this unknown land systematic collecting of skins goes on, for bale after bale of impeyan and red argus (tragopan) pheasant skins goes down to the Calcutta wharves, where its infamous contents, though known, are safe from seizure under the Nepal Raja's seal! Thus it is that the London feather sales still list these among the most splendid of all living birds. And shame upon shame, when we read of 80 impeyan skins "dull," or "slightly defective," we know that these are female birds. Then, if ever, we realize that the time of the bird and the beast is passing, the acme of evolution for these wonderful beings is reached, and at most we can preserve only a small fragment of them.

To the millinery hunter, what the egret is to America, and the bird of paradise to New Guinea, the impeyan pheasant is to India—the most coveted of all plumages. There is a great tendency to blame the native hunter for the decrease of this and other pheasants, and from what I have personally seen in many parts of the Himalayas there is no question that the Garwhalese and Nepalese hill-men have wrought havoc among the birds. But these men are by no means the sole cause. As long ago as 1879 we read that "The great demand for the brilliant skins of the moonal that has existed for many years has led to their almost total extermination in some parts of the hills, as the native shikaris shoot and snare for the pot as well as for skins, and kill as many females as males. On the other hand, though for nearly thirty years my friend Mr. Wilson has yearly sent home from 1,000 to 1,500 skins of this species and the tragopan, there are still in the woods whence they were obtained as many as, if not more than, when he first entered them, simply because he has rigidly preserved females and nests, and (as amongst English pheasants) one cock suffices for several hens."



Ignoring the uncertainty of the last statement, it is rather absurd to think of a single man "preserving" females and nests in the Himalayas from 1850 to 1880, when the British Government, despite most efficient laws and worthy efforts is unable to protect the birds of these wild regions to-day. The statement that after thirty to forty-five thousand cock impeyans were shot or snared, as many or more than the original quota remained, could only emanate from the mind of a professional feather-hunter, and Hume should not be blamed for more than the mere repetition of such figures. Let it be said to the credit of Wilson, the slaughterer of something near forty-five thousand impeyans, that he was a careful observer of the birds' habits, and has given us an excellent account, somewhat coloured by natives, but on the whole, the best we have had in the past. But it is not pleasant to read of his waiting until "twenty or thirty have got up and alighted in the surrounding trees, and have then walked up to the different trees and fired at those I wished to procure without alarming the rest, only those very close to the one fired at being disturbed at each report."

Hume's opinion that in 1879 there were scores of places where one might secure from ten to eighteen birds in a day, is certainly not true to-day. Indeed, as early as 1858 we read that "This splendid bird, once so abundant on the Western Himalayas is now far from being so, in consequence of the numbers killed by sportsmen on account of its beauty. Whole tracts of mountain forest once frequented by the moonal are now almost without a single specimen." The same author goes on naively to tell the reader that "Among the most pleasant reminiscences of bygone days is a period of eleven days, spent by the author and a friend on the Choor Mountain near Simia, when among other trophies were numbered sixty-eight moonal pheasants, etc."



For some unaccountable reason there is, or was for many years, a very prevalent idea that the enormous number of skins which have poured into the London market were from birds bred in the vicinity of Calcutta. When we remember the intense heat of that low-lying city, and learn from the records of the Calcutta Zoological Garden that impeyans and tragopans are even shorter-lived than in Europe, the absurdity of the idea is apparent. In spite of numberless inquiries throughout India, I failed to learn of a single captive young bird ever hatched and reared even in the high, cool, hill-stations. The commercial value of an impeyan skin has varied from five dollars to twenty dollars, according to the number received annually. In 1876 an estimate placed the monthly average of impeyans received in London at from two to eight hundred.

In such a case as Nepal, direct protective laws are of no avail. All humane arguments are useless, but if the markets at the other end can be closed, the slaughter will cease instantly and automatically.



As a contrast to the millinery hunter of fifty years ago it is refreshing to find that at last sincere efforts are being made in British possessions to stop this traffic. I happened to be at Rangoon when six large bales of pheasant skins were seized by the Custom officials. A Chinaman had brought them from Yunnan via Bhamo, and was preparing to ship them as ducks' feathers. Two of the bales were opened for my inspection. The first contained about five hundred Lady Amherst pheasant skins, falling to pieces and lacking heads and legs. The second held over four hundred silver pheasants, in almost perfect condition. The chief collector had put the absolutely prohibitive fine of 200 pounds on them, and was waiting for the expiration of the legal number of days before burning the entire lot. They must have represented years of work in decimating the pheasant fauna of western China.

Far up in the wilderness of northern Burma, and over the Yunnan border, we often came upon some of the most ingenious examples of native trapping, a system which we found repeated in the Malay States, Borneo, China and other parts of the Far East. A low bamboo fence is built directly across a steep valley or series of valleys, about half way from the summit to the lower end, and about every fifteen feet a narrow opening is left, over which a heavy log is suspended. Any creature attempting to make its way through, treads upon several small sticks and by so doing springs the trap and the dead-fall claims a victim. When a country is systematically strung with traps such as these, sooner or later all but a pitiful remnant of the smaller mammals, birds and reptiles are certain to be wiped out. Morning after morning I have visited such a runway and found dead along its path, what must have been all the walking, running or crawling creatures which the night before had sought the water at the bottom; pheasants, cobras, mouse-deer, rodents, civets, and members of many other groups. In some countries nooses instead of dead-falls guard the openings, but the result is equally deadly.

I have described this method of trapping because of its future importance in the destruction of wild life in the Far East. The Chinaman in all his many millions is undergoing a remarkably swift and radical evolution both of character and dress. In many ways, if only from the viewpoint of the patient, thrifty store-keeper he is a most powerful factor in the East, and is becoming more so. In many cases he imitates the white nations by cutting off his queue and altering his dress. In some mysterious correlated way his diet seems simultaneously affected, and while for untold generations rice and fish has satisfied all his gastronomic desires, a new craving, that for meat, has come to him. The result is apparent in many parts of the East. The Chinaman is willing and able to pay for meat, and the native finds a new market for the creatures about him. Again and again when I wished a few specimens of some certain pheasant I had but to hail passing canoes and bid a few annas or "cash" or "ringits" higher than the prospective Chinese purchaser would give, and the pheasants were mine.

In the catalogues of the brokers' sales of feathers we read of many thousands of the wonderful ocellated wing feathers of the argus pheasant, but no less horrible is the sight of a canoe crammed with the bedraggled bodies of these magnificent birds on their way to some Chinese hamlet where they will be sold for a pittance, the flesh eaten to the last tendon and the feathers given to the children and puppies to play with. The newly-aroused appetite of the Mongolian will soon be an important factor in the extermination of animals and birds, few species being exempt, for the Chinaman lives up to his reputation and is not squeamish as to the nature of his meat.

Before we leave the subject of Chinamen let us consider another recent factor in the destruction of wild life which is at present widely operative in China itself. This is the cold storage warehouse, of which six or eight enormous ones have gone up in different parts of the East. To speak in detail only of the one at Hankow, six hundred miles up the Yangtze, we found it to be the largest structure in the city. Surrounded by a high wall, with each entrance and exit guarded by armed Sikhs, it seemed like the feudal castle of some medieval baron. Why such secrecy is necessary I could not learn, as there are no laws against its business. But so carefully guarded is its premises that until a short time ago even the British consul-general of Hankow had not been allowed to enter. He, however, at last refused to sign the papers for any more outgoing shipments until he should be allowed to see what was going on within the warehouse. I hoped to be able to look over some of the frozen pheasants for interesting scientific material, but of course was not allowed to do so.

Although here in the heart of China, outside changes are not felt so strongly and the newly-acquired meat diet of the border and emigrant Chinese is hardly apparent, these warehouses have opened up a new source of revenue, which has met with instant response. Thousands and tens of thousands of wild shot or trapped pheasants and other birds are now brought to these establishments by the natives from far and near. The birds are frozen, and twice a year shipped on specially refrigerated P. and O. steamships to England and the continent of Europe where they seem to find a ready sale. Pigs and chickens also figure in the shipments. Now the pheasants have for centuries existed in enormous numbers in the endless ricefields of China, without doing any damage to the crops. In fact they could not be present in such numbers without being an important factor in keeping down insect and other enemies of the grain. When their numbers are decimated as they are being at present, there must eventually result a serious upsetting of the balance of nature. Let us hope that in some way this may be avoided, and that the present famine deaths of thirty thousand or more in some provinces will not be increased many fold.

When I started on this search for pheasants I was repeatedly told by old explorers in the east that my task would be very different from theirs of thirty years ago; that I would find steamers, railroads and automobiles where formerly were only canoes and jungle. I indeed found this as reported, but while my task was different it was made no easier. Formerly, to be sure, one had from the start to paddle slowly or push along the trails made by natives or game animals. But then the wild life was encountered at once, while I found it always far from the end of the steamer's route or the railroad's terminal, and still to be reached only by the most primitive modes of travel.

I cite this to give point to my next great cause of destruction; the burning and clearing of vast stretches of country for the planting of rubber trees. The East seems rubber mad, and whether the enormous output which will result from the millions of trees set out month after month will be profitable, I cannot say. I can think only of the vanishing of the entire fauna and flora of many districts which I have seen as a direct result of this commercial activity. One leaves Port Swettenham on the west coast of Selangor, and for the hour's run to Kuala Lumpur sees hardly anything but vast radiating lines of spindling rubber trees, all underbrush cleared, all native growths vanished. From Kuala Lumpur to Kuala Kubu at the very foot of the mountain backbone of the Malay Peninsula, the same holds true. And where some area appears not under cultivation, the climbing fern and a coarse, useless "lalang" grass covers every inch of ground. One can hardly imagine a more complete blotting out of the native fauna and flora of any one limited region. And ever-extending roads for the increasing motor cars are widening the cleared zone, mile after mile to the north and south.

In this region, as we pushed on over the mountains into the wilderness of Pahang, we saw little of the actual destruction of the primeval native growth, but elsewhere it became a common sight. Once, for many days we studied the wonderful life of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and nights full of interest.

And then, one day without warning came the sound of an ax, and another and another. From that moment the songs, cries, chirps and roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp. Every day saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind. Then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young tupaias, nestling birds; a few out of the thousands of creatures from insects to mammals which were slain so that a Chinaman or Malay might eke a few dollars, four or five years hence, from a grove of rubber trees. I do not say it is wrong. Man has won out, and might is right, as since the dawn of creation; but to the onlooker, to the lover of nature and the animal world it is a terrible, a hopeless thing.

One cannot at present leave the tourist line of travel in the East without at once encountering evidence of the wholesale direct slaughter of wild life, or its no less certain extermination by the elimination of the haunts and the food plants of the various beasts and birds.

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CHAPTER XXI

THE SAVAGE VIEW-POINT OF THE GUNNER

The mental attitude of the men who shoot constitutes a deadly factor in the destruction of wild life and the extermination of species. Fully ninety-five per cent of the sportsmen, gunners and other men and boys who kill game, all over the world and in all nations, regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed and eaten, and not as creatures worth preserving for their beauty or their interest to mankind. This is precisely the viewpoint of the cave-man and the savage, and it has come down from the Man-with-a-Club to the Man-with-a-Gun absolutely unchanged save for one thing: the latter sometimes is prompted to save to-day in order to slaughter to-morrow.

The above statement of an existing fact may seem harsh; and some persons may be startled by it; but it is based on an acquaintance with thousands of men who shoot all kinds of game, all over the world. My critics surely will admit that my opportunities to meet the sportsmen and gunners of the world are, and for thirty-five years have been, rather favorable. As a matter of fact, I think the efforts of the hunters of my personal acquaintance have covered about seven-tenths of the hunting grounds of the world. If the estimate that I have formed of the average hunter's viewpoint is wrong, or even partially so, I will be glad to have it proven in order that I may reform my judgment and apologize.

In working with large bodies of bird-shooting sportsmen I have steadily—and also painfully—been impressed by their intentness on. killing, and by the fact that they seek to preserve game only to kill it! Who ever saw a bird-shooter rise in a convention and advocate the preservation of any species of game bird on account of its beauty or its esthetic interest alive? I never did; and I have sat in many conventions of sportsmen. All the talk is of open seasons, bag limits and killing rights. The man who has the hardihood to stand up and propose a five-year close season has "a hard row to hoe." Men rise and say: "It's all nonsense! There's plenty of quail shooting on Long Island yet."

Throughout the length and breadth of America, the ruling passion is to kill as long as anything killable remains. The man who will openly advocate the stopping of quail-shooting because the quails are of such great value to the farmers, or because they are so beautiful and companionable to man, receives no sympathy from ninety per cent of the bird-killing sportsmen. The remaining ten per cent think seriously about the matter, and favor long close seasons. It is my impression that of the men who shoot, it is only among the big-game hunters that we find much genuine admiration for game animals, or any feeling remotely resembling regard for it.

The moment that a majority of American gunners concede the fact that game birds are worth preserving for their beauty, and their value as living neighbors to man, from that moment there is hope for the saving of the Remnant. That will indeed be the beginning of a new era, of a millennium in fact, in the preservation of wild life. It will then be easy to enact laws for ten-year close seasons on whole groups of species. Think what it would mean for such a close season to be enacted for all the grouse of the United States, all the shore-birds of the United States, or the wild turkey wherever found!

To-day, the great—indeed, the only—opponents of long close seasons on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters' and Anglers' Protective Associations will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill. And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless of the opposition of "a large body of sportsmen,"—men who have votes, and who know how to take revenge on lawmakers who deprive them of their "right" to kill. The greatest speech ever made in the Mexican Congress was uttered by the member who solemnly said: "I rise to sacrifice ambition to honor!"

Unfortunately, the men who shoot have become possessed of the idea that they have certain inherent, God-given "rights" to kill game! Now, as a matter of fact, a sportsman with a one-hundred-dollar Fox gun in his hands, a two-hundred-dollar dog at his heels and five one-hundred-dollar bills in his pocket has no more "right" to kill a covey of quail on Long Island than my milkman has to elect that it shall be let alone for the pleasure of his children! The time has come when the people who don't shoot must do one of two things:

1. They must demonstrate the fact that they have rights in the wild creatures, and demand their recognition, or

2. See the killable game all swept off the continent by the Army of Destruction.

Really, it is to me very strange that gunners never care to save game birds on account of their beauty. One living bob white on a fence is better than a score in a bloody game-bag. A live squirrel in a tree is poetry in motion; but on the table a squirrel is a rodent that tastes as a rat smells. Beside the ocean a flock of sandpipers is needed to complete the beautiful picture; but on the table a sandpiper is beneath contempt. A live deer trotting over a green meadow, waving a triangular white flag, is a sight to thrill any human ganglion; but a deer lying dead,—unless it has an exceptionally fine head,—is only so much butcher's meat.

One of the finest sights I ever saw in Montana was a big flock of sage grouse slowly stalking over a grassy flat thinly sprinkled with sage-brush. It was far more inspiring than any pile of dead birds that I ever saw. I remember scores of beautiful game birds that I have seen and not killed; but of all the game birds that I have eaten or tried to eat in New York, I remember with sincere pleasure only one. Some of the ancient cold-storage candidates I remember "for cause," as the lawyers say.



Sportsmen and gunners, for God's sake elevate your viewpoint of the game of the world. Get out of the groove in which man has run ever since the days of Adam! There is something in a game bird over and above its pound of flesh. You don't "need" the meat any longer; for you don't know what hunger is, save by reading of it. Try the field-glass and the camera, instead of the everlasting gun. Any fool can take a five-dollar gun and kill a bird; but it takes a genius to photograph one wild bird and get "a good one." As hunters, the camera men have the best of it. One good live-bird photograph is more of a trophy and a triumph than a bushel of dead birds. The birds and mammals now are literally dying for your help in the making of long close seasons, and in the real stoppage of slaughter. Can you not hear the call of the wild remnant?

It is time for the people who don't shoot to call a halt on those who do; "and if this be treason, then let my enemies make the most of it!"

Since the above was written, I have read in the Outdoor World for April, 1912, the views of a veteran sportsman and writer, Mr. Emerson Hough, on the wild-life situation as it seems to him to-day. It is a strong utterance, even though it reaches a pessimistic and gloomy conclusion which I do not share. Altogether, however, its breadth of view, its general accuracy, and its incisiveness, entitle it to a full hearing. The following is only an extract from a lengthy article entitled, "God's Acre:"

* * * * *

EMERSON HOUGH'S VIEW OF THE SITUATION

The truth is none the less the truth because it is unpleasant to face. There is no well posted sportsman in America, no manufacturer of sporting goods in America, no man well versed in American outdoor matters, who does not know that we are at the evening of the day of open sport in America. Our old ways have failed, all of them have failed. The declining fortunes of the best sportsman's journals of America would prove that, if proof were asked. Our sportsmanship has failed. Our game laws have failed, and we know they have failed. Our game is almost gone, and we know it is almost gone. America has changed and we know that it has changed, although we have not changed with it. The old America is done and it is gone, and we know that to be the truth. The old order passeth, and we know that the new order must come soon if it is to work any salvation for our wild game and our life in the open in pursuit of it.

There are many reasons for this fact, these facts. Perhaps the greatest lies in the steady advance of civilization into the wilderness, the usurpation for agricultural or industrial use of many of the ancient breeding and feeding places of the wild game. All over the West and now all over Canada, the plow advances, that one engine which cannot be gainsaid, which never turns a backward furrow.

Another great agency is the rapid perfection of transportation all over the world. Take the late influx of East African literature. If there really were not access to that country we would not have this literature, would not have so many pictures from that country. And if even Africa will soon be overrun, if even Africa soon will be shot out, what hope is there for the game of the wholly accessible North American continent?

It is all too easy now for the slaughterer to get to his work, all too easy for him to transport the fruits of the slaughter. At the hands of the ignorant, the unscrupulous and the unsparing, our game has steadily disappeared until it is almost gone. We have handled it in a wholly greedy, unscrupulous and selfish fashion. This has been our policy as a nation. If there is to be success for any plan to remedy this, it must come from a few large-minded men, able to think and plan, and able to do more than that—to follow their plans with deeds.

I have seen the whole story of modern American sportsmanship, so called. It has been class legislation and organized selfishness—that is what it has been, and nothing else. I do not blame country legislators, game dealers, farmers, for calling the sportsmen of America selfish and thoughtless. I do not blame them for saying that the so-called protective measures advanced by sportsmen have been selfish measures, and looking to destruction rather than to protection. At least that has been their actual result. I have no more reverence for a sportsman than for anyone else, and no reverence for him at all because he is or calls himself a sportsman. He has got to be a man. He has got to be a citizen.

I have seen millions of acres of breeding and feeding grounds pass under the drain and under the plow in my own time, so that the passing whisper of the wild fowl's wing has been forgotten there now for many years. I have seen a half dozen species of fine game birds become extinct in my own time and lost forever to the American people.

And you and I have seen one protective society after another, languidly organized, paying in a languid dollar or so per capita each year, and so swiftly passing, also to be forgotten. We have seen one code and the other of conflicting and wholly selfish game laws passed, and seen them mocked at and forgotten, seen them all fail, as we all know.

We have seen even the nation's power—under that Ark of the Covenant known as the Interstate Commerce Act—fail to stop wholly the lessening of our wild game, so rapidly disappearing for so many reasons.

We have seen both selfish and unselfish sportsmen's journals attempt to solve this problem and fail to do so. Some of them were great and broad-minded journals. Their record has not been one of disgrace, although it has been one of defeat; for some of them really desired success more than they desired dividends. These, all of them, bore their share of a great experiment, an experiment in a new land, under a new theory of government, a theory which says a man should be able to restrain himself, and to govern himself. Only by following their theory through to the end of that experiment could they know that it was to fail in one of its most vitally interesting and vitally important phases.

But now, as we know, all of these agencies, selfish or unselfish, have failed to effect the salvation of American wild game. Not by any scheme, device, or theory, not by any panacea can the old days of America be brought back to us.

* * * * *

Mr. Hough's views are entitled to respectful consideration; but on one vital point I do not follow him.

I believe most sincerely—in fact, I know,—that it is possible to make a few new laws which, in addition to the many, many good protective laws we already have, will bring back the game, just as fast and as far as man's settlements, towns, railroads, mines and schemes in general ever can permit it to come back.

If the American People as a whole elect that our wild life shall be saved, and to a reasonable extent brought back, then by the Eternal it will be saved and brought back! The road lies straight before us, and the going is easy—if the Mass makes up its mind to act. But on one vital point Mr. Hough is right. The sportsman alone never will save the game! The people who do not kill must act, independently.

* * * * *

PART II.—PRESERVATION

CHAPTER XXII

OUR ANNUAL LOSSES BY INSECTS

"You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live."

"In no country in the world," says Mr. C.L. Marlatt, of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "do insects impose a heavier tax on farm products than in the United States." These attacks are based upon an enormous and varied annual output of cereals and fruits, and a great variety and number of trees. For every vegetable-eating insect, native and foreign, we seem to have crops, trees and plant food galore; and their ravages rob the market-basket and the dinner-pail. In 1912 there were riots in the streets of New York over the high cost of food.

In 1903, this state of fact was made the subject of a special inquiry by the Department of Agriculture, and in the "Yearbook" for 1904, the reader will find, on page 461, an article entitled, "The Annual Loss Occasioned by Destructive Insects in the United States." The article is not of the sensational type, it was not written in an alarmist spirit, but from beginning to end it is a calm, cold-blooded analysis of existing facts, and the conclusions that fairly may be drawn from them. The opinions of several experts have been considered and quoted, and often their independent figures are stated.

With the disappearance of our birds generally, and especially the slaughter of song and other insect-eating birds both in the South and North, the destruction of the national wealth by insects forges to the front as a subject of vital importance. The logic of the situation is so simple a child can see it. Short crops mean higher prices. If ten per cent of our vegetable food supply is destroyed by insects, as certain as fate we will feel it in the increased cost of living.

I would like to place Mr. Marlatt's report in the hands of every man, boy and school-teacher in America; but I have not at my disposal the means to accomplish such a task. I cannot even print it here in full, but the vital facts can be stated, briefly and in plain figures.

* * * * *

CROPS AND INSECTS.

CORN.—The principal insect enemies of corn are the chinch bug, corn-root worm (Diabrotica longicornis), bill bug, wire worm, boll-worm or ear-worm, cut-worm, army worm, stalk worm, grasshopper, and plant lice, in all a total of about fifty important species! Several of these pests work secretly. At husking time the wretched ear-worm that ruins the terminal quarter or fifth of an immense number of ears, is painfully in evidence. The root-worms work insidiously, and the moles and shrews are supposed to attack them and destroy them. The corn-root worm is charged with causing an annual loss of two per cent of the corn crop, or $20,000,000; the chinch bug another two per cent; the boll or ear-worm two per cent more. The remaining insect pests are charged with two per cent, which makes eight per cent in all, or a total of $80,000,000 lost each year to the American farmer through the ravages of insects. This is not evenly distributed, but some areas suffer more than others.



WHEAT.—Of all our cereal crops, wheat is the one that suffers most from insects. There are three insects that cause to the wheat industry an annual loss of about ten per cent. The chinch bug is the worst, and it is charged with five per cent ($20,000,000) of the total loss. The Hessian fly comes next in order, and occasionally rolls up enormous losses. In the year 1900, that insect caused to Indiana and Ohio alone the loss of 2,577,000 acres of wheat, and the total cost to us of that insect in that year "undoubtedly approached $100,000,000." Did that affect the price of wheat or not? If not, then there is no such thing as a "law of supply and demand."

Wheat plant-lice form collectively the third insect pest destructive to wheat, of which it is reported that "the annual loss occasioned by wheat plant-lice probably does not fall short of two or three per cent of the crop."

HAY AND FORAGE CROPS.—These are attacked by locusts, grasshoppers, army worms, cut-worms, web worms, small grass worms and leaf hoppers. Some of these pests are so small and work so insidiously that even the farmer is prone to overlook their existence. "A ten per cent shrinkage from these and other pests in grasses and forage plants is a minimum estimate."

COTTON.—The great enemies of the cotton-planter are the cotton boll weevil, the bollworm and the leaf worm; but other insects inflict serious damage. In 1904 the loss occasioned by the boll weevil, chiefly in Texas, was conservatively estimated by an expert, Mr. W.D. Hunter, at $20,000,000. The boll worm of the southwestern cotton states has sometimes caused an annual loss of $12,000,000, or four per cent of the crops in the states affected. Before the use of arsenical poisons, the leaf worm caused an annual loss of from twenty to thirty million dollars; but of late years that total has been greatly reduced.

FRUITS.—The insects that reduce our annual fruit crop attack every portion of the tree and its product. The woolly aphis attacks the roots of the fruit tree, the trunk and limbs are preyed upon by millions of scale insects and borers, the leaves are devastated by the all-devouring leaf worms, canker worms and tent caterpillars, while the fruit itself is attacked by the codling moth, curculio and apple maggot. To destroy fruit is to take money out of the farmer's pocket, and to attack and injure the tree is like undermining his house itself. By an annual expenditure of about $8,250,000 in cash for spraying apple trees, the destructiveness of the codling moth and curculio have been greatly reduced, but that money is itself a cash loss. Add to this the $12,000,000 of actual shrinkage in the apple crop, and the total annual loss to our apple-growers due to the codling moth and curculio is about $20,000,000. In the high price of apples, a part of this loss falls upon the consumer.

In 1889 Professor Forbes calculated that the annual loss to the fruit-growers of Illinois from insect ravages was $2,375,000. In 1892, insects caused to Nebraska apple-growers a loss computed at $2,000,000 and, in 1897, New York farmers lost $2,500,000 from that cause. "In many sections of the Pacific Northwest the loss was from fifty to seventy-five per cent." (Yearbook, page 470.)

FORESTS.—"The annual losses occasioned by insect pests to forests and forest products (in the United States) have been estimated by Dr. A.D. Hopkins, special agent in charge of forest insect investigations, at not less than $100,000,000.... It covers both the loss from insect damages to standing timber, and to the crude and manufactured forest products. The annual loss to growing timber is conservatively placed at $70,000,000."



There are other insect damages that we will not pause to enumerate here. They relate to cattle, horses, sheep and stored grain products of many kinds. Even cured tobacco has its pest, a minute insect known as the cigarette beetle, now widespread in America and "frequently the cause of very heavy losses."

The millions of the insect world are upon us. Their cost to us has been summed up by Mr. Marlatt in the table that appears below.

* * * * *

ANNUAL VALUES OF FARM PRODUCTS, AND LOSSES CHARGEABLE TO INSECT PESTS.

Official Report in the Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture, 1904.

% OF PRODUCT VALUE LOSS AMOUNT OF LOSS

Cereals $2,000,000,000 10 $200,000,000 Hay 530,000,000 10 53,000,000 Cotton 600,000,000 10 60,000,000 Tobacco 53,000,000 10 5,300,000 Truck Crops 265,000,000 20 53,000,000 Sugars 50,000,000 10 5,000,000 Fruits 135,000,000 20 27,000,000 Farm Forests 110,000,000 10 11,000,000 Miscellaneous Crops 58,000,000 10 5,800,000

Total $3,801,000,000 $420,100,000

Animal Products 1,750,000,000 10 175,000,000 Natural Forests and 100,000,000 Forest Products Products in Storage 100,000,000

GRAND TOTAL $5,551,000,000 $795,100,000

The millions of the insect world are upon us. The birds fight them for us, and when the birds are numerous and have nestlings to feed, the number of insects they consume is enormous. They require absolutely nothing at our hands save the privilege of being let alone while they work for us! In fighting the insects, our only allies in nature are the songbirds, woodpeckers, shore-birds, swallows and martins, certain hawks, moles, shrews, bats, and a few other living creatures. All these wage war at their own expense. The farmers might just as well lose $8,250,000 through a short apple crop as to pay out that sum in labor and materials in spraying operations. And yet, fools that we are, we go on slaughtering our friends, and allowing others to slaughter them, under the same brand of fatuous folly that leads the people of Italy to build anew on the smoking sides of Vesuvius, after a dozen generations have been swept away by fire and ashes.

In the next chapter we will consider the work of our friends, The Birds.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS

To-day, from Halifax to Los Angeles, and from Key West to Victoria, a deadly contest is being waged. The fruit-growers, farmers, forest owners and "park people" are engaged in a struggle with the insect hordes for the possession of the trees, shrubs and crops. Go out into the open, with your eyes open, and you will see it for yourself. Millions of dollars are being expended in it. Look at this exhibit of what is going on around me, at this very moment,—July 19, 1912:

The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring the leaves of locust and maple trees.

The elm beetles are trying to devour the elms; and spraying is in progress.

The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; and even some park people are neglecting to take the measures necessary to stop it!

The tent caterpillars are being burned.

The aphis (scale insects) are devouring the tops of the white potatoes in the New York University school garden, just as the potato beetle does.

The codling moth larvae are already at work on the apples.

The leaves affected by the witch hazel gall fly are being cut off and burned.

These are merely the most conspicuous of the insect pests that I now see daily. I am not counting those of second or third-rate importance.

Some of these hordes are being fought with poisonous sprays, some are being killed by hand, and some are being ignored.

In view of the known value of the remaining trees of our country, each woodpecker in the United States is worth twenty dollars in cash. Each nuthatch, creeper and chickadee is worth from five to ten dollars, according to local circumstances. You might just as well cut down four twenty-inch trees and let them lie and decay, as to permit one woodpecker to be killed and eaten by an Italian in the North, or a negro in the South. The downy woodpecker is the relentless enemy of the codling moth, an insect that annually inflicts upon our apple crop damages estimated by the experts of the U.S. Department of Agriculture at twelve million dollars!

Now, is a federal strong-arm migratory bird law needed for such birds or not? Let the owners of orchards and forests make answer.

THE CASE OF THE CODLING MOTH AND CURCULIO.—The codling moth and curculio are twin terrors to apple-growers, partly because of their deadly destructiveness, and partly because man is so weak in resisting them. The annual cost of the fight made against them, in sprays and labor and apparatus, has been estimated at $8,250,000. And what do the birds do to the codling moth,—when there are any birds left alive to operate? The testimony comes from all over the United States, and it is worth while to cite it briefly as a fair sample of the work of the birds upon this particularly deadly pest. These facts and quotations are from the "Yearbook of the Department of Agriculture," for 1911.



The Downy Woodpecker is the champion tree-protector, and also one of the greatest enemies of the codling moth. When man is quite unable to find the hidden larvae, Downy locates it every time, and digs it out. It extracts worms from young apples so skillfully that often the fruit is not permanently injured. Mr. F.M. Webster reports that the labors of this bird "afford actual and immediate relief to the infected fruit." Testimony in favor of the downy woodpecker has come from New York, New Jersey, Texas and California, "and no fewer than twenty larvae have been taken from a single stomach."

Take the Red-Shafted Flicker vs. the codling moth. Mr. A.P. Martin of Petaluma, Cal., states that during the early spring months (of 1890) they were seen by hundreds in his orchard, industriously examining the trunks and larger limbs of the fruit trees; and he also found great numbers of them around sheds where he stored his winter apples and pears. As the result of several hours' search, Mr. Martin found only one worm, and this one escaped only by accident, for several of the birds had been within a quarter of an inch of it. "So eager are woodpeckers in search, of codling moths that they have often been known to riddle the shingle traps and paper bands which are placed to attract the larvae about to spin cocoons."

Behold the array of birds that devour the larvae of the codling moth to an important extent.

* * * * *

BIRDS THAT DEVOUR THE CODLING MOTH

Downy Woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens). Hairy Woodpecker (Dryobates villosus). Texan Woodpecker (Dryobates scalaris bairdi). Red-Headed Woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus). Red-Shafted Flicker (Colaptes cafer collaris). Pileated Woodpecker (Phloeotomus pileatus). Kingbird (Tyrranus tyrranus). Western Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher (Empidonax difficilis). Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata). California Jay (Aphelocoma californica). Magpie (Pica pica hudsonia). Crow Blackbird (Quiscalus quiscula). Brewer Blackbird (Euphagus cyanocephalus). Bullock Oriole (Icterus bullocki). English Sparrow (Passer domesticus). Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina). California Towhee (Pipilo crissalis). Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis). Black Headed Grosbeak (Zamelodia melanocephala). Lazuli Bunting (Passerina cyanea). Barn Swallow (Hirundo erythrogastra). Western Warbling Vireo (Vireosylva gilva swainsoni). Summer, or Yellow Warbler (Dendroica aestiva). Lutescent Warbler (Vermivora celata lutescens). Brown Creeper (Certhia familiaris americana). White-Breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis). Black-Capped Chickadee (Penthestes atricapillus). Plain Titmouse (Baeolophus inornatus). Carolina Chickadee (Penthestes carolinensis). Mountain Chickadee (Penthestes gambeli). California Bush Tit (Psaltriparus minimus californicus). Ruby-Crowned Kinglet (Regulus calendula). Robin (Planesticus migratorius). Bluebird (Sialia sialis).

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In all, says Mr. W.L. McAtee, thirty-six species of birds of thirteen families help man in his irrepressible conflict against his deadly enemy, the codling moth. "In some places they destroy from sixty-six to eighty-five per cent of the hibernating larvae."

Now, are the farmers of this country content to let the Italians of the North, and the negroes of the South, shoot those birds for food, and devour them? What is the great American farmer going to do about this matter? What he should do is to write and urge his members of Congress to work for and vote for the federal migratory bird bill.

THE COTTON BOLL WEEVIL.—Let us take one other concrete case. The cotton boll weevil invaded the United States from Mexico in 1894. Ten years later it was costing the cotton planters an annual loss estimated at fifteen million dollars per year. Later on that loss was estimated at twenty million dollars. The cotton boll weevil strikes at the heart of the industry by destroying the boll of the cotton plant. While the total loss never can be definitely ascertained, we know that it has amounted to many millions of dollars. The figure given above has been widely quoted, and so far as I am aware, never disputed.

Fortunately we have at hand a government publication on this subject which gives some pertinent facts regarding the bird enemies of the cotton boll weevil. It is Circular No. 57 of the Biological Survey, Department of Agriculture. Any one can obtain it by addressing that Department. I quote the most important portions of this valuable document:

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BIRDS USEFUL IN THE WAR AGAINST THE COTTON BOLL WEEVIL.

By H.W. Henshaw, Chief of the Biological Survey.

The main purpose of this circular is to direct the attention of cotton growers and others in the cotton growing states to the importance of birds in the boll weevil war, to emphasize the need of protection for them, and to suggest means to increase the numbers and extend the range of certain of the more important kinds.

Investigations by the Biological Survey show that thirty-eight species of birds eat boll weevils. While some eat them only sparingly others eat them freely, and no fewer than forty-seven adult weevils have been found in the stomach of a single cliff swallow. Of the birds known at the present time to feed on the weevil, among the most important are the orioles, nighthawks, and, foremost of all, the swallows (including the purple martin).

ORIOLES.—Six kinds of orioles live in Texas, though but two inhabit the southern states generally. Orioles are among the few birds that evince a decided preference for weevils, and as they persistently hunt for the insects on the bolls, they fill a place occupied by no other birds. They are protected by law in nearly every state in the Union, but their bright plumage renders them among the most salable of birds for millinery purposes, and despite protective laws, considerable numbers are still killed for the hat trade. It is hardly necessary to point out that their importance as insect eaters everywhere demands their protection, but more especially in the cotton belt.

NIGHTHAWK.—The nighthawk, or bull-bat, also renders important service in the destruction of weevils, and catches them on the wing in considerable numbers, especially during its migration. Unfortunately, the nighthawk is eaten for food in some sections of the South, and considerable numbers are shot for this purpose. The bird's value for food, however, is infinitesimal as compared with the service it renders the cotton grower and other agriculturists, and every effort should be made to spread broadcast a knowledge of its usefulness as a weevil destroyer, with a view to its complete protection.

SWALLOWS.—Of all the birds now known to destroy weevils, swallows are the most important. Six species occur in Texas and the southern states. The martin, the barn swallow, the bank swallow, the roughwing, and the cliff swallow breed locally in Texas, and all of them, except the cliff swallow, breed in the other cotton states. The white-bellied, or tree swallow, nests only in the North, and by far the greater number of cliff swallows nest in the North and West.



As showing how a colony of martins thrives when provided with sufficient room to multiply, an experiment by Mr. J. Warren Jacobs, of Waynesburg, Pa., may be cited. The first year five pairs were induced to occupy the single box provided, and raised eleven young. The fourth year three large boxes, divided into ninety-nine rooms, contained fifty-three pairs, and they raised about 175 young. The colony was thus nearly three hundred strong at the close of the fourth season. The effect of this number of hungry martins on the insects infesting the neighborhood may be imagined.

From the standpoint of the farmer and the cotton grower, swallows are among the most useful birds. Especially designed by nature to capture insects in midair, their powers of flight and endurance are unexcelled, and in their own field they have no competitors. Their peculiar value to the cotton grower consists in the fact that, like the nighthawk, they capture boll weevils when flying over the fields, which no other birds do. Flycatchers snap up the weevils near trees and shrubbery. Wrens hunt them out when concealed under bark or rubbish. Blackbirds catch them on the ground, as do the killdeer, titlark, meadow lark, and others; while orioles hunt for them on the bolls. But it is the peculiar function of swallows to catch the weevils as they are making long flights, leaving the cotton fields in search of hiding places in which to winter or entering them to continue their work of devastation.

Means have been taken to inform residents of the northern states of the value of the swallow tribe to agriculturists generally, and particularly to cotton planters, in the belief that the number of swallows breeding in the North can be substantially increased. The cooperation of the northern states is important, since birds bred in the North migrate directly through the southern states in the fall on their way to the distant tropics, and also in the spring on their return.



Important as it is to increase the number of northern breeding swallows, it is still more important to increase the number nesting in the South and to induce the birds there to extend their range over as much of the cotton area as possible. Nesting birds spend much more time in the South than migrants, and during the weeks when the old birds are feeding young they are almost incessantly engaged in the pursuit of insects.

It is not, of course, claimed that birds alone can stay the ravages of the cotton boll weevil in Texas, but they materially aid in checking the advance of the pest into the other cotton states. Important auxiliaries, in destroying these insects, birds aid in reducing their numbers within safe limits, and once within safe limits in keeping them there. Hence it is for the interests of the cotton states that special efforts be made to protect and care for the weevil-eating species, and to increase their numbers in every way possible.—(End of the circular.)

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CONDENSED NOTES ON THE FOOD HABITS OF CERTAIN NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS.

Millions of Americans and near-Americans, both old and young, now need to be shown the actual figures that represent the value of our birds as destroyers of the insects, weeds and the small rodents that are swarming to overrun and devour our fields, orchards and forests. Will our people never learn that in fighting pests the birds are worth ten times more to men than all the poisons, sprays and traps that ever were invented or used?

We cannot spray our forests; and if the wild birds do not protect, them from insects, nothing will! If you will watch a warbler collecting the insects out of the top of a seventy-foot forest oak, busy as a bee hour after hour, it will convince you that the birds do for the forests that which man with all his resources cannot accomplish. You will then realize that to this country every woodpecker, chickadee, titmouse, creeper and warbler is easily worth its weight in gold. The killing of any member of those groups of birds should be punished by a fine of twenty-five dollars.



THE BOB-WHITE.—And take the Bob White Quail, for example, and the weeds of the farm. To kill weeds costs money—hard cash that the farmer earns by toil. Does the farmer put forth strenuous efforts to protect the bird of all birds that does most to help him keep down the weeds? Far from it! All that the average farmer thinks about the quail is of killing it, for a few ounces of meat on the table.

It is fairly beyond question that of all birds that influence the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, the common quail, or bob white, is one of the most valuable. It stays on the farm all the year round. When insects are most numerous and busy, Bob White devotes to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen to eighteen hours per day. When the insects are gone, he turns his attention to the weeds that are striving to seed down the fields for another year. Occasionally he gets a few grains of wheat that have been left on the ground by the reapers; but he does no damage. In California, where the valley quail once were very numerous, they sometimes consumed altogether too much wheat for the good of the farmers; but outside of California I believe such occurrences are unknown.

Let us glance over the bob white's bill of fare:

Weed Seeds.—One hundred and twenty-nine different weeds have been found to contribute to the quail's bill of fare. Crops and stomachs have been found crowded with rag-weed seeds, to the number of one thousand, while others had eaten as many seeds of crab-grass. A bird shot at Pine Brook, N.J., in October, 1902, had eaten five thousand seeds of green fox-tail grass, and one killed on Christmas Day at Kinsale, Va., had taken about ten thousand seeds of the pig-weed. (Elizabeth A. Reed.) In Bulletin No. 21, Biological Survey, it is calculated that if in Virginia and North Carolina there are four bob whites to every square mile, and each bird consumes one ounce of seed per day, the total destruction to weed seeds from September 1st to April 30th in those states alone will be 1,341 tons.

In 1910 Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice, of Clark University, Worcester, Mass., finished and contributed to the Journal of Economic Entomology (Vol. III., No. 3) a masterful investigation of "The Food of the Bob-White." It should be in every library in this land. Mrs. Nice publishes the entire list of 129 species of weed seeds consumed by the quail,—and it looks like a rogue's gallery. Here is an astounding record, which proves once more that truth is stranger than fiction:

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NUMBER OF SEEDS EATEN BY A BOB-WHITE IN ONE DAY

Barnyard grass 2,500 Milkweed 770 Beggar ticks 1,400 Peppergrass 2,400 Black mustard 2,500 Pigweed 12,000 Burdock 600 Plantain 12,500 Crab grass 2,000 Rabbitsfoot clover 30,000 Curled dock 4,175 Round-headed bush clover 1,800 Dodder 1,560 Smartweed 2,250 Evening primrose 10,000 White vervain 18,750 Lamb's quarter 15,000 Water smartweed 2,000

NOTABLY BAD INSECTS EATEN BY THE BOB-WHITE

(Prof. Judd and Mrs. Nice.)

Colorado potato beetle Cucumber beetle Chinch bug Bean-leaf beetle Wireworm May beetle Corn billbug Imbricated-snout beetle Plant lice Cabbage butterfly Mosquito Squash beetle Clover leaf beetle Cotton boll weevil Cotton boll worm Striped garden caterpillar Cutworms Grasshoppers Corn-louse ants Rocky Mountain locust Codling moth Canker worm Hessian fly Stable fly

SUMMARY OF THE QUAIL'S INSECT FOOD

Orthoptera—Grasshoppers and locusts 13 species. Hemiptera—Bugs 24 " Homoptera—Leaf hoppers and plant lice 6 " Lepidoptera—Moths, caterpillars, cut-worms, etc 19 " Diptera—Flies 8 " Coleoptera—Beetles 61 " Hymenoptera—Ants, wasps, slugs 8 " Other insects 6 " —- Total 145 "

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A few sample meals of insects.—The following are records of single individual meals of the bob white:

Of grasshoppers, 84; chinch bugs, 100; squash bugs, 12; army worm, 12; cut-worm, 12; mosquitoes, 568 in three hours; cotton boll weevil, 47; flies, 1,350; rose slugs, 1,286. Miscellaneous insects consumed by a laying hen quail, 1,532, of which 1,000 were grasshoppers; total weigh of the lot, 24.6 grams.

"F.M. Howard, of Beeville, Texas, wrote to the U.S. Bureau of Entomology, that the bob whites shot in his vicinity had their crops filled with the weevils. Another farmer reported his cotton fields full of quail, and an entire absence of weevils." Texas and Georgia papers (please copy.)

And yet, because of its few pitiful ounces of flesh, two million gunners and ten thousand lawmakers think of the quail only as a bird that can be shot and eaten! Throughout a great portion of its former range, including New York and New Jersey, the species is surely and certainly on the verge of total extinction. And yet sportsmen gravely discuss the "bag limit," and "enforcement of the bag-limit law" as a means of bringing back this almost vanished species! Such folly in grown men is very trying.

To my friend, the Epicure:—The next time you regale a good appetite with blue points, terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, rich claret and dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is laid before you, on a funeral pyre of toast, and consider this: "Here lies the charred remains of the Farmer's Ally and Friend, poor Bob White. In life he devoured 145 different kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema weeds. For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most marvelous engine of destruction that God ever put together of flesh and blood. He was good, beautiful and true; and his small life was blameless. And here he lies, dead; snatched away from his field of labor, and destroyed, in order that I may be tempted to dine three minutes longer, after I have already eaten to satiety."

Then go on, and finish Bob White.

THE CASE OF THE ROBIN.—For a long time this bird has been slaughtered in the South for food, regardless of the agricultural interests of the North. No Southern gentleman ever shoots robins, or song birds of any kind, but the negroes and poor whites do it. The worst case of recent occurrence was the slaughter in the town of Pittsboro, North Carolina.

It was in January, 1912. The Mayor of the town, Hon. Bennet Nooe, was away from home; and during a heavy fall of snow "the robins came into the town in great numbers to feed upon the berries of the cedar trees. In order that the birds might be killed without restriction, the Board of Aldermen suspended the ordinance against the firing of guns in the town, and permitted the inhabitants to kill the robins."

A disgraceful carnival of slaughter immediately followed in which "about all the male population" participated. Regarding this, Mayor Nooe later on wrote to the editor of Bird Lore as follows:

"Hearing of this, on my return, I went to the Aldermen, all of whom were guilty, and told them that they and all others who were guilty would have to be fined. Three out of the five submitted and paid up, but they insisted that the ordinance be changed to read exactly as it is written here, with the exception that all could shoot robins in the town until the first of March; whereupon I resigned, as was stated."—(Bird Lore, XIV, 2. p. 140.)

The Mayor was quite right. The robin butchers of Pittsboro were not worthy to be governed by him.

THE MEADOW LARK is one of the most valuable birds that frequent farming regions. Throughout the year insects make up 73 per cent of its food, weed-seeds 12 per cent, and grain only 5 per cent. During the insect season, insects constitute 90 per cent of its food.

THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE is as valuable to man as it is beautiful. Its nest is the most wonderful example of bird architecture in our land. In May insects constitute 90 per cent of this bird's food. For the entire year, insects and other animal food make 83.4 per cent and vegetable matter 16.6 per cent.

THE CROW BLACKBIRD feeds as follows, throughout the whole year: insects, 26.9 per cent; other animal food 3.4; corn 37.2; oats, 2.9; wheat, 4.8; other grain, 1.6; fruits, 5; weed seeds and mast 18.2! This report was based on the examination (by the Biological Survey) of 2,346 stomachs, and "the charge that the blackbird is an habitual robber of birds' nests was disproved by the examinations." (F.E.L. Beal.)

FLYCATCHERS.—The high-water mark in insect-destruction by our birds is reached by the flycatchers,—dull-colored, modest-mannered little creatures that do their work so quietly you hardly notice them. All you see in your tree-tops is a two-foot flit or glide, now here and now there, as the leaves and high branches are combed of their insect life.

Bulletin No. 44 of the Department of Agriculture gives the residuum of an exhausting examination of 3,398 warbler stomachs, from seventeen species of birds, and the result is: 94.99 per cent of insect food,—mostly bad insects, too,—and 5.01 per cent vegetable food. What more can any forester ask of a bird?



THE SPARROWS.—All our sparrows are great consumers of weed seeds. Professor Beal has calculated the total quantity consumed in Iowa in one year,—in the days when sparrows were normally numerous,—at 1,750,000 pounds.

THE AMERICAN GOLDFINCH as a weed destroyer has few equals. It makes a specialty of the seeds of the members of the Order Compositae, and is especially fond of the seeds of ragweed, thistles, wild lettuce and wild sunflower. But, small and beautiful as this bird is, there are hundreds of thousands of grown men in America who would shoot it and eat it if they dared!

THE HAWKS AND OWLS.—Let no other state repeat the error that once was made in Pennsylvania when that state enacted in 1885, her now famous hawk-and-owl bounty law. In order to accomplish the wholesale destruction of her birds of prey, a law was passed providing for the payment of a bounty of fifty cents each for the scalps of hawks and owls. Immediately the slaughter began. In two years 180,000 scalps were brought in, and $90,000 were paid out for them. It was estimated that the saving to the farmers in poultry amounted to one dollar for each $1,205 paid out in bounties.

The awakening came even more swiftly than the ornithologists expected. By the end of two years from the passage of "the hawk law," the farmers found their fields and orchards thoroughly overrun by destructive rats, mice and insects, and they appealed to the legislature for the quick repeal of the law. With all possible haste this was brought about; but it was estimated by competent judges that in damages to their crops the hawk law cost the people of Pennsylvania nothing less than two million dollars.

Moral: Don't make any laws providing for the destruction of hawks and owls until you have exact knowledge, and know in advance what the results will be.

In the space at my disposal for this subject, it is impossible to treat our species of hawks and owls separately. The reader can find in the "American Natural History" fifteen pages of text, numerous illustrations and many figures elucidating this subject. Unfortunately Dr. Fisher's admirable work on "The Hawks and Owls" has long been out of print, and unobtainable. There are, however, a few observations that must be recorded here.

Each bird of prey is a balanced equation. Each one, I think without a single exception, does some damage, chiefly in the destruction of valuable wild birds. The value of the poultry destroyed by hawks and owls is very small in comparison with their killing of wild prey. Many of the species do not touch domestic poultry! At the same time, when a hawk of any kind, or an owl, sets to work deliberately and persistently to clean out a farmer's poultry yard, and is actually doing it, that farmer is justified in killing that bird. But, the occasional loss of a broiler is not to be regarded as justification for a war of extermination on all the hawks that fly! Individual wild-animal nuisances can occasionally become so exasperating as to justify the use of the gun,—when scarecrows fail; but in all such circumstances the greatest judgment, and much forbearance also, is desirable and necessary.

The value of hawks and owls rests upon their perpetual warfare on the millions of destructive rats, mice, moles, shrews, weasels, rabbits and English sparrows that constantly prey upon what the farmer produces. On this point a few illustrations must be given. One of the most famous comes via Dr. Fisher, from one of the towers of the Smithsonian buildings, and relates to

THE BARN OWL, (Strix flammea).—Two hundred pellets consisting of bones, hair and feathers from one nesting pair of these birds were collected, and found to contain 454 skulls, of which 225 were of meadow mice, 179 of house mice, 2 of pine mice, 20 were of rats, 6 of jumping mice, 20 were from shrews, 1 was of a mole and 1 a vesper sparrow. One bird, and 453 noxious mammals! Compare this with the record of any cat on earth. Anything that the barn owl wants from me, or from any farmer, should at once be offered to it, on a silver tray. This bird is often called the Monkey-Faced Owl, and it should be called the Farmer's-Friend Owl.

THE LONG-EARED OWL, (Asio wilsonianus) has practically the same kind of a record as the barn owl,—scores of mice, rats and shrews destroyed, and only an occasional small bird. Its nearest relative, the Short-eared Owl (A. accipitrinus) may be described in the same words.



The GREAT HORNED OWL fills us with conflicting passions. For the long list of dead rats and mice, pocket gophers, skunks, and weasels to his credit, we think well of him, and wish his prosperity. For the song-birds, ruffed grouse, quail, other game birds, domestic poultry, squirrels, chipmunks and hares that he kills, we hate him, and would cheerfully wring his neck, wearing gauntlets. He does an unusual amount of good, and a terrible amount of harm. It is impossible to strike a balance for him, and determine with mathematical accuracy whether he should be shot or permitted to live. At all events, whenever Bubo comes up for trial, we must give the feathered devil his due.

The names "CHICKEN HAWK or HEN HAWK" as applied usually refer to the RED-SHOULDERED or RED-TAILED species. Neither of these is really very destructive to poultry, but both are very destructive to mice, rats and other pestiferous creatures. Both are large, showy birds, not so very swift in flight, and rather easy to approach. Neither of them should be destroyed,—not even though they do, once in a great while, take a chicken or wild bird. They pay for them, four times over, by rat-killing. Mr. J. Alden Loring states that he once knew a pair of red-shouldered hawks to nest within fifty rods of a poultry farm on which there were 800 young chickens and 400 ducks, not one of which was taken. (See the American Natural History, pages 229-30.)

HAWKS THAT SHOULD BE DESTROYED.—There are two small, fierce, daring, swift-winged hawks both of which are so very destructive that they deserve to be shot whenever possible. They are COOPER'S HAWK (Accipiter cooperi) and the SHARP-SHINNED HAWK (A. velox). They are closely related, and look much alike, but the former has a rounded tail and the latter a square one. In killing them, please do not kill any other hawk by mistake; and if you do not positively recognize the bird, don't shoot.

THE GOSHAWK is a bad one, and so is the PEREGRINE FALCON, or DUCK HAWK. Both deserve death, but they are so rare that we need not take them into account.

Some of the hawks and owls are very destructive to song-birds, and members of the grouse family. In 159 stomachs of sharp-shinned hawks, 99 contained song-birds and woodpeckers. In 133 stomachs of Cooper's hawks, 34 contained poultry or game birds, and 52 contained other birds. The game birds included 8 quail, 1 ruffed grouse and 5 pigeons.

THE WOODPECKERS.[I]—These birds are the natural guardians of the trees. If we had enough of them, our forests would be fairly safe from insect pests. Of the six or seven North American species that are of the most importance to our forests, the DOWNY WOODPECKER, (Dryobates pubescens) is accorded first rank. It is one of the smallest species. The contents of 140 stomachs consisted of 74 per cent insects, 25 per cent vegetable matter and 1 per cent sand. The insects were ants, beetles, bugs, flies, caterpillars, grasshoppers and a few spiders.

[Footnote I: The reader is advised to consult Prof. F.E.L. Beale's admirable report on "The Food of Woodpeckers," Bulletin No. 7, U.S. Department of Agriculture.]

THE HAIRY WOODPECKER, (Dryobates villosus), a very close relation of the preceding species, is also small, and his food supply is as follows: insects, 68 per cent, vegetable matter 31, mineral 1.

THE GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER, (Colaptes auratus), is the largest and handsomest of all the woodpeckers that we really see in evidence. The Pileated is one of the largest, but we never see it. This bird makes a specialty of ants, of which it devours immense numbers. Its food is 56 per cent animal matter (three-fourths of which is ants), 39 per cent is vegetable matter, and 5 per cent mineral matter.

THE RED-HEADED WOODPECKER is a serious fruit-eater, and many complaints have been lodged against him. Exactly one-half his food supply consists of vegetable matter, chiefly wild berries, acorns, beechnuts, and the seeds of wild shrubs and weeds. We may infer that about one-tenth of his food, in summer and fall, consists of cultivated fruit and berries. His proportion of cultivated foods is entirely too small to justify any one in destroying this species.

In view of the prevalence of insect pests in the state of New York, I have spent hours in trying to devise a practical plan for making woodpeckers about ten times more numerous than they now are. Contributions to this problem will be thankfully received. Yes; we do put out pork fat and suet in winter, quantities of it; but I grieve to say that to-day in the Zoological Park there is not more than one woodpecker for every ten that were there twelve years ago. Where have they gone? Only one answer is possible. They have been shot and eaten, by the guerrillas of destruction.



Surely no man of intelligence needs to be told to protect woodpeckers to the utmost, and to feed them in winter. Nail up fat pork, or large chunks of suet, on the south sides of conspicuous trees, and encourage the woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and titmice to remain in your woods through the long and dreary winter.

THE ENGLISH SPARROW is a nuisance and a pest, because it drives away from the house and the orchard the house wren, bluebird, phoebe, purple martin and swallow, any one of which is more valuable to man than a thousand English sparrows. I never yet have seen one of the pest sparrows catch an insect, but Chief Forester Merkel says that he has seen one catching and eating small moths.

There is one place in the country where English sparrows have not yet come; and whenever they do appear there, they will meet a hostile reception. I shall kill every one that comes,—for the sake of retaining the wrens, catbirds, phoebes and thrushes that now literally make home happy for my family. A good way to discourage sparrows is to shoot them en masse when they are feeding on road refuse, such as the white-throated, white-crowned and other sparrows never touch. Persistent destruction of their nests will check the nuisance.

THE SHORE BIRDS.—Who is there who thinks of the shore-birds as being directly beneficial to man by reason of their food habits? I warrant not more than one man in every ten thousand! We think of them only as possible "food." The amount of actual cash value benefit that the shore-birds confer upon man through the destruction of bad things is, in comparison with the number of birds, enormous.

The Department of Agriculture never publishes and circulates anything that has already been published, no matter how valuable to the public at large. Our rules are different. Because I know that many of the people of our country need the information, I am going to reprint here, as an object lesson and a warning, the whole of the Biological Survey's valuable and timely circular No. 79, issued April 11, 1911, and written by Prof. W.L. McAtee. It should open the eyes of the American people to two things: the economic value of these birds, and the fact that they are everywhere far on the road toward extermination!

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OUR VANISHING SHOREBIRDS

By Prof. W.L. McAtee

The term shorebird is applied to a group of long-legged, slender-billed, and usually plainly colored birds belonging to the order Limicolae. More than sixty species of them occur in North America. True to their name they frequent the shores of all bodies of water, large and small, but many of them are equally at home on plains and prairies.

Throughout the eastern United States shorebirds are fast vanishing. While formerly numerous species swarmed along the Atlantic coast and in the prairie regions, many of them have been so reduced that extermination seems imminent. The black-bellied plover or beetlehead, which occurred along the Atlantic seaboard in great numbers years ago, is now seen only as a straggler. The golden plover, once exceedingly abundant east of the Great Plains, is now rare. Vast hordes of long-billed dowitchers formerly wintered in Louisiana; now they occur only in infrequent flocks of a half dozen or less. The Eskimo curlew within the last decade has probably been exterminated and the other curlews greatly reduced. In fact, all the larger species of shorebirds have suffered severely.

So adverse to shorebirds are present conditions that the wonder is that any escape. In both fall and spring they are shot along the whole route of their migration north and south. Their habit of decoying readily and persistently, coming back in flocks to the decoys again and again, in spite of murderous volleys, greatly lessens their chances of escape.

The breeding grounds of some of the species in the United States and Canada have become greatly restricted by the extension of agriculture, and their winter ranges in South America have probably been restricted in the same way.

Unfortunately, shorebirds lay fewer eggs than any of the other species generally termed game birds. They deposit only three or four eggs, and hatch only one brood yearly. Nor are they in any wise immune from the great mortality known to prevail among the smaller birds. Their eggs and young are constantly preyed upon during the breeding season by crows, gulls, and jaegers, and the far northern country to which so many of them resort to nest is subject to sudden cold storms, which kill many of the young. In the more temperate climate of the United States small birds, in general, do not bring up more than one young bird for every two eggs laid. Sometimes the proportion of loss is much greater, actual count revealing a destruction of 70 to 80 per cent of nests and eggs. Shorebirds, with sets of three or four eggs, probably do not on the average rear more than two young for each breeding pair.