34H Sfafc HorficiiJfiiral Society. 



tection Ix' changed, and they certainly need improvement, it wonld be best 

 to adopt the most modern views in conformity with the latest resnlts of 

 food investigations by the United States Department of Agriculture, 

 namely, to extend protection to all species and individuals of birds, except- 

 ing only ducks and geese, for which an open season from September i to 

 April I may be provided, and of other species only such individuals as 

 are found in the act of doing damage. A man must be allowed to protect 

 his fruit or cornfield from the ravages of birds, if he so chooses, but it 

 should not be allowed to kill such birds at other times in other places 

 where they do no damage. For instance some crows and some black- 

 birds rob the farmer sometimes of corn, while at all other times they are 

 the farmers best help in keeping down the insect pests. Would it be 

 right or reasonable to kill every individual of these species at sight? Cer- 

 tainly not. We raise in this glorious country over 2,000 million bushels 

 of corn in ordinary seasons ; suppose all corn-eating birds together eat 

 1,000 bushels, surely a high estimate, the loss would amount to one bushel 

 in two millions, hardly worth considering and certainly only a small 

 quantity compared with what is destroyed by the rodents in field and 

 barn. This loss will increase continually, if we do not soon give the 

 hawks and owls the protection which they need so badly. At present 

 everybody kills hawks and owls, the farmer's best friends ; this should be 

 stopped. There is one species of hawk in Missouri who does nearly all 

 the damage in the chicken yard and for his misdeeds all hawks are called 

 chickenhawks and killed at sight without discrimination ; nineteen times 

 out of twenty it is the innocent, or rather the useful species that are 

 killed, because the real robber, the Cooper's Hawk, comes and goes 

 like lightning and seldom gives the gunner a chance to shoot. The 

 same is the case with the owls. All our common owls, which are so 

 unmercifully slaughtered by farmer and hunter alike are the greatest 

 mice destroyers known and deserve our best protection. 



And why should we continue to slay all the large birds, even if they 

 should not be of any real pecuniary benefit? Is there, besides their eco- 

 nomic value, no other reason why we need the birds ? Does their aesthetic, 

 their poetic, their artistic value count for naught until it will be too late 

 for repair? Already most of the larger birds of beauty, the egrets, the 

 cranes, the swans and pelicans are deplorably rare, and those of less strik- 

 ing appearance, the dififerent kinds of herons and bitterns, the gulls and 

 terns, the loons and cormorants, the plovers and waders, the larger wood- 

 peckers and the kingfishers, in short all the conspicuous birds which form- 

 erly lent so muoli charm to the lanscape, are getting scarcer and scarcer 

 every year. Life in the country will be robbed of much of its pleasure 



