312 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



eludes all predatory birds that wear feathers. The lifework of some 

 these birds belonging to this order is considered to be beneficial 

 while the lifework of other is decidedly injurious. When a Gos- 

 hawk or a cooper's hawk or a sharp-shinned hawk even threaten to 

 strike your poultry, you are out after him at once with a gun as you 

 have a right to do and should do. The fact that one of these birds 

 lives in your neighborhood means possible death to many of your 

 fowls and loss to you. The death of the birds means safety to the 

 entire brood, and profit to you. And my idea is, that this unfixed, 

 varying thing, covered by the word '^profit,'' is what most farmers 

 are trying to secure. City folk, of course, have no such countryfied 

 ideas. They are above that; they are actuated by other motives. To 

 my mind there are various birds described by ornithologists, and 

 then some, and I am fully satisfied that many of our real predatory 

 birds are entirely without feathers, and that many of them live and 

 roost in cities, each one of which is to my mind far more injurious 

 to the interests of the man who labors on the farm with his hands 

 than all the order of birds wearing feathers that may come upon his 

 property, and classed by ornithologists as "Raptores." 



I shall not attempt to enter into a consideration of the numer- 

 ous and varied happenings that lead me to this conclusion, and shall 

 consider but one line of many that I know of, by way of illustration: 

 The dairy interests of the Commonwealth, in the aggregate, amount 

 to considerable and the cost of maintaining a dairy is no small charge 

 upon the farmer. You own your cattle; you paid for the land upon 

 which they graze; you paid for the lumber, etc., used in the construc- 

 tion of the buildings in which they are housed. You labor early and 

 late to supply the food for the maintenance of your herds, you milk 

 the cows, you do such other things as may be needed to keep your 

 cattle in condition, and send that milk or its product to the markets, 

 through the middleman. Milk lost through souring or from any other 

 cause is your loss. It is estimated that it requires the product from 

 at least three cows to keep one cow. It is also asserted that not 

 more than one cow in three really makes a return of "profit" to its 

 keepers. It is up to every farmer to save at every turn, to be able 

 to make both ends meet. He skimps and twists, wears old clothes, 

 goes to bed at dark so as to save the cost of oil, in some instances 

 eats what he could not sell, and is forced to place his product that 

 he may have for sale in the hands of the unclassified bird from the 

 city, whose sole object is, as he tells you, to help the farmer. 



This bird, and his fellow birds, form a company, and call it a 

 Creamery Company. Your milk is tested at these places, and you are 

 paid the minimum market price according to the presence of butter- 

 fat as shown by the test applied at that place. I know of a man who 

 has been collecting data regarding this matter for some time. Upon 

 one occasion the milk from one cow, taken at the same milking and 

 well mixed, was divided into two parts, each part as tested at this 

 creamery, and showed a marked difference between the two tests. 

 At another time the morning's milk, after being thoroughly mixed 

 showed, as tested at the creamery, a certain mark. The evening's 

 milk treated in the same way showed a certain mark, while portions 

 taken from the same milkings and cans and sent to a Philadelphia 

 chemist, one of the best testers of milk in this State, showed the 

 morning's milk at the creamery, and the evening milk to have been 



