TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 133 



great amount of pain would go to eating, and yet they will do that almost 

 invariably. There are other reasons why I do not believe it a painful 

 death; there is certainly no comparison between it and shooting into a 

 flock of birds where twenty or thirty will go away with shot here and 

 there, through them, to die in misery somewhere, or starve with broken 

 wings. 



Q. Is the strychnine dissolved in water? 



A. One eighth of an ounce of strychnine in a quarter of a bushel of 

 wheat. It is best to put enough stiychnine in, and it is inexpensive. 

 Strychnine is sold in two forms. One form will not dissolve readily in 

 water. If you add a drop of vinegar to the water, it will dissolve. If 

 you get the chrystals of strychnine, which is the form in which it is best 

 to use it, it will dissolve readily in the water, and of course the utmost 

 care must be used as to where you put that water and poisoned grain 

 afterward. There is one annoying thing about it, and until we discov- 

 ered it, we did not understand the repeated failures in poisoning birds 

 with strychnine. When you go to the drug store and buy strychnine, 

 ten, fifteen, or twenty cents' worth, the chances are about even, if the 

 drug clerk doesn't know you, that he gives you salt or something else, 

 and if you soak up salt, you may impair the digestion of the birds, but 

 you don't lessen their number. If necessary, make a confidant of the 

 drug clerk, and tell him what you want it for, and let him mix it, and take 

 your grain down there. He will be satisfied then that you don't want to 

 kill yourself or any one else. I am doing perhaps a rash thing in advo- 

 cating a poison, without looking up the legality of it. I don't know 

 what the law is. In some states there are regulations that would pre- 

 vent the use of poisons in this way. I don't find anything on that subject 

 in the game laws, except that they are not allowed to kill game by any 

 such methods, but I do not think any trouble would come from it, unless 

 a person should recklessly distributa poison; but in the way I have indi- 

 cated, it can be safely done. I have had some experience in killing rob- 

 ins. In one large harvest apple tree I killed a hundred robins in one year, 

 and picked up seven bushels of apples that they had picked off. We also 

 have the rose-breasted grosbeak, but I seldom see one that is destruc- 

 tive. I noticed, though, on one of my Richmond cherry trees, that the 

 petals of the blossoms were falling off. By and by, I sow a rose-breasted 

 grosbeak and an oriole, and I found that they were taking out the little 

 cherry in the center. I seldom have killed one of them, for they are not 

 destructive, and they are too handsome a bird to kill, and I can stand the 

 oriole pretty well. The robin, until five years ago, never touched my 

 pears, and he learned it from the oriole, which is a very destructive bird 

 and troubled my early pears badly. The blackbird injures me most, in 

 the sweet corn. When I undertake to seed, they will clean it right off. 

 The first English sparrow I shot, I opened his stomach, and I found the 

 gizzard full of grubs. I was told that the robin wouldn't eat grubs. I 

 shot one and opened his stomach, and I didn't find any grubs there; on 

 opening the gizzard, however, I found remains of grubs. The English 

 sparrows do not bother me at all. It is only necessary to shoot them 

 once or twice and they stay away. They do get into mischief, though. 

 The English sparrow will stick his little bill into a grape and break the 

 skin, taste it, and then the honey bee does the rest. I have seen them in 

 the maple trees, picking off the leaves and letting them fall, just for the 

 fun of it. 



