ARBORICULTURE 



The Preservation of Our Birds. 



Since the birls first gladdened the earth with 

 their morning song and the beauty of their 

 plumage there have always been those who 

 have loved them, and who have done all they 

 could to protect and care for them. But in this 

 busy, hurrying world of ours, where the dollar 

 has assumed such abnormal importance, we 

 must be able to give a practical reason for their 

 protection as well as an aesthetic one. For 

 many years birds were ruthlessly murdered for 

 the mere love of the sport and because we did 

 not realize that we were harming ourselves by 

 permitting such acts. But the untiring work of 

 scientists has proved beyond a doubt the great 

 value of the birds, and it is upon their eco- 

 nomical value that T wish to write for Arbori- 

 culture. 



Asa Gray, one of the greatest American bot- 

 anists, has said : "Animals depend absolutely 

 upon vegetables for their being. The great ob- 

 ject for which the All-wise Creator established 

 the vegetable kingdom is, that plants might 

 stand on the surface of the earth between the 

 mineral and animal creations, and organize 

 portions of the former for the sustenance of the 

 latter." This statement is but a reiteration of 

 what is recorded in Holy Writ, for there it is 

 said : "And God said, And to every beast of the 

 earth and to every fowl of the air, and to every- 

 thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein 

 there is the breath of life, I have given every 

 green herb for meat." 



Weed and Dearborn, in their most excellent 

 book, "Birds in Their Relation to Man," say : 

 "A correct idea of the economic role of the 

 feathered tribes may be obtained only by a 

 broader view of nature's methods — a view in 

 which we must ever keep before the mind's eye 

 the fact that the parts of the organic world, 

 from nomad to man, are linked together in a 

 thousand ways, the net result being that un- 

 stable equilibrium commonly called 'the balance 

 of nature.' " In preserving "the balance of na- 

 ture" so that the earth shall yield that vege- 

 tation which "shall be meat" for man, three 

 vicious elements must be contended with, 

 namely, (i) the weeds, (2) the insects, and (3) 



the rodents. Tlie rapidity with which these 

 pests increase and the damage they are capable 

 of doing is almost incomprehensible. 



It is also recorded that God said : "Cursed 

 is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt 

 thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns 

 also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; and 

 thou shalt eat the herbs of the field ; in the sweat 

 of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return 

 unto the ground." Since that record was made 

 a great warfare has been waged in this world 

 between good and evil, and this has been true 

 not only in the world of morals, but also in the 

 vegetable world. By "thorns and thistles" as 

 used in the quotation, thorny and prickly plants 

 alone are not meant, but in a broader sense all 

 useless and troublesome plants are included. 

 One needs only to count the seeds produced by 

 a single plant of purslane, platain or thistle to 

 be convinced of the prodigious reproductive 

 power of our conmion weeds. But for the war- 

 fare that is being waged against them by man 

 and his allies, the weeds would take exclusive 

 possession of our gardens and fields, and we 

 would be without bread. It may be that in that 

 condition we, like the savages, could subsist 

 upon the meat of the woods, wild fruits, and 

 the flesh of wild animals, and be able to clothe 

 ourselves with the skins of the animals, but it 

 would be impossible for us to live the lives of 

 civilized beings under such conditions. 



While it is true that man shall earn his 

 bread by the sweat of his brow, it is also true 

 that by his own labor alone he can not have 

 bread to eat. He is a dependent being, and 

 without the allies which nature so bountifully 

 supplies to him, he would be powerless in keep- 

 ing under control its evil and destructive forces. 

 In this work our birds are our most effective 

 allies and helpers, and notably is this true of 

 our seed-eating birds in keeping the weeds 

 under control. This valuable service to man is, 

 in the main, rendered by the bird family Frin- 

 gillidae, to which belong the sparrows, finches, 

 buntings and grosbeaks, and which contains 

 more than one-seventh of the North American 

 species of birds. Dr. S. D. Judd has made a 

 careful study of the feeding habits of many of 



