410 BOARD OF AGRICULTUUE. 



whu lioliovi'd tliat the liirds helped hirjifly in saving; the crops. aiul4ln? 

 people who, for reasons moral, esthetic or spiritual, objected to the whole- 

 sale destruction of tlio birds. 



The battle for tlie birds has been soinj: on ever since: the milliners' 

 position was practically that the Audul)on j)eople, mostly sentimental 

 women and boolvish men. weie all very well, so long as they confined 

 themselves to writing poetry and pretty essays about the birds, but when 

 it came to their really arousing a sentiment against the wearing birds for 

 hat trimming, and actually got laws passed prohibiting the killing of birds 

 for such purposes, that was an entirely different story, and really could 

 not be tolerated at all. Sentiment and poetry were all well enough so they 

 did not interfere with l)usiness. but this interfering with business had to 

 stop. The men and boys who shoot any living thing that has not a money 

 value and an owner, objected very seriously to having their sport 

 hindered. 



The study of economic ornithology received an impetus that resulted m 

 the estal)lishment of a division in the Department of Agriculture for 

 carrying on this work and investigation along these lines. The published 

 results of these painstaking, thorougli and comprehensive studies fur- 

 nislu'd the friends of the birds with arguments that served to retire the 

 husiness arguments of the milliners: for the l)usiness interests that the liv- 

 ing birds conserve are so greatly in excess of the interests that make use 

 of the bird skins, that the milliners' claims l)ecome ridiculous. They 

 have shifted their ground, and not long ago I happened on a most pathetic 

 wail in a fashion magazine, becau.'-e some people were losing all sense of 

 poetry out of their lives— "even the birds, our messengers from the skies, 

 tne spirits of the air,'" were coming to have a merely commercial value, 

 nothing but destroyers of bugs and noxious weed seed. These sordid 

 Audubon people Avere measuring their value not by the inspiration the 

 birds were to mankind, but by that great American standard, the "al- 

 mighty dollar." I counted some seventeen birds in pictures and descrip- 

 tions of hats in the front part of that same magazine, the "messengers of 

 the skies seemed to have answered pretty well for cascades of wings 

 gracefully drap( d on the left side." 



However, the birds are liy no means as common for hat decoration as 

 they used to be; and people are coming to find that some extremely in- 

 teresting and valuable matter is being and has been published by these 

 men whose l)usiness it is to study the birds and determine their value 

 to man. Mr. Chapman in his "Birds of Eastern North America" shows 

 the helpfulness of these investigations. He says, quoting from the report 

 of Dr. C. Hart Alerriam, Ornithologist of the U. S. Department of Agri- 

 culture: "On the 23d of June, 1885, the Legislature of Pennsylvania 

 passed an act known as the '.scalp act,' ostensibly for the benefit of agri- 

 culture, which provides a bounty of fifty cents each on hawks, owls, 

 minks and weasels killed within the limits of the State, and a fee of 



