58 



THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



[6:3-Mar.,1910 



hunters to allow them to shoot bobwhite on his land. He replied, 

 "I don't like to be unneighborly, boys, but I had much rather 

 you would go into my barnyard and shoot my chickens". 

 From the point of actual money values involved, the farmer 

 may well have been right. As a farmer boy I have seen chinch 

 bugs two* or three inches deep on the platform of the reaper — 

 more bugs than wheat. We harvested three or four bushels 

 of shrivelled grain to the acre — but there were no bobwhites on 

 the farm. 



The above is not intended to suggest any objection to field 

 sport. The more we have for the boys, and for the girls too, 

 the better; but is not the bobwhite worth too much, for the 

 work it is able to do, to use for sport, until the country is fullv 

 stocked with them, up to the natural limits of insect and weed- 

 seed food supply? When this condition is reached, both farm- 

 er and sportsman will reap a rich reward. 



A pair of bobwhites has been known to produce ioo eggs 

 in a season. Five hens reared by the writer produced an av- 



BOBWHITE'S NEST UNDER THE SPRUCES 



erage of 65 eggs apiece. The birds do not brood well in con- 

 finement, but toward the end of the season both the cocks and 

 hens have incubated successfully and have reared their 

 broods. The method followed has been to leave the nests un- 

 disturbed until well filled, and then, if neither bird is inclined 

 to brood, the eggs are put under cochin bantam hens and plas- 



