Summer Meeting. 39 



the birds; He gave them their beautiful plumage, their songs of 

 joy and hope, their life and vivacity. How like a streak of light 

 the humming bird flits from tree to tree, or vine to vine. Or the 

 more stately robin sings his tender song, that comes from the 

 heart and goes to the heart, with a melody all its own. 



The robin eats its own weight of bugs and flies and worms 

 every day. A growing robin eats twice its own weight each day. 

 A female chinch bug lays 500 eggs in the brooding season, and she 

 has three brooding seasons in a year. You may calculate how 

 many chinch bugs this one mother makes in one year. One quail, 

 a number of persons estimate, will swallow one thousand chinch 

 bugs in a day. The number of chinch bugs one quail will devour 

 from the time these bugs show signs of life till the quail quits 

 eating them, you can also estimate. You will no longer wonder 

 that there should be so many chinch bugs in the fields. 



The chicken is an enormous feeder. The little chicks eat the 

 smaller insects; the large ones, bugs and flies and worms, and if 

 you have the number of chickens in accord with the amount of 

 ground they run over, you will be troubled but little with insects 

 within the chicken range. Outside of this you must depend on other 

 birds. The woodpecker and yellow hammer for borers, the so-called 

 sap-sucker for worms in the barks of trees, and song birds for 

 the destruction of other worms and insects. 



A man in Illinois would not allow a bird killed on his place. 

 A new boy, with a whip in hand, saw a quail light on the fence; 

 he struck the partridge with his whip ; the bird fell to the ground. 

 The man ran out of the house; he took the bird in his hand; it 

 was bruised and frightened, but otherwise not hurt ; he re-arranged 

 its feathers ; he knew where its nest was, and took it there ; he wat- 

 ered and fed and took care of it. In the course of time the eggs 

 hatched a nest full of young birds, and soon there was a covey of 

 quail. This man worked for birds, and the birds worked for him. 

 He was blessed with good crops. His fruit was large and plump 

 and juicy — not ill-shaped, knotty and full of worms. The birds 

 had attended to that; and when the ripening time came, his cider 

 was not nauseous with worms' excrement, but sparkling and clear 

 with the pure juice of the apple. 



The state law clothes with all the powers and authority of the 

 game and fish warden, every sheriff and his deputies, every con- 

 stable and his deputies, and if the officers do not do their duty, 

 they should be punished according to law and voted against at the 

 coming ejection. T.h^ gods help those who help themselves. Pro- 



