SUMMER MEETING AT BEOOKFIELD. 169 



a drove of seventy-five or one hundred would destroy over a bushel of 

 insects in one season, and we all know from our own observation they 

 will easily do it. Old settlers of Illinois and Kansas say chinch-bugs 

 itnd grasshoppers were unknown in those states before the quails and 

 prairie chickens were shipped from there by the car-load. I can well 

 remember as a little girl I ate apples without any fear of biting into a 

 worm, and yet horticulturists begrudge the poor little birds a cherry. 

 Even the brilliant little humming bird, acknowledged by all as the 

 loveliest thing in nature, has its uses, for many flowers, notably those of 

 the black locust, could not produce fruit were not their blossoms fertil- 

 ized by the visits of the humming bird and bumble bees. 



The law of Missouri permits the killing of prairie chickens, quail, 

 doves, larks and plover during all the fall and winter months, only pro- 

 tecting them in the brooding season. But what we want is not a license 

 law, but prohibition, prohibition that will prohibit. The killing of birds 

 is a crime against every fruit-raiser ; the State should prohibit it. There 

 ought to be a law in every State entirely forbidding the killing of all 

 birds at any season of the year, except possibly crows and hawks. I 

 don't like crows, and yet they are good scavengers, and I suppose they 

 are a necessary evil. As to hawks, the good and evil they do is about 

 equally balanced. 



If the different State horticultural societies were to ask for the 

 passage of such a law, they could easily secure its adoption. And it 

 certainly would be a great advantage to the farmers and fruit-raisers 

 of the country. 



I have heard whole chapters, and some sections and a few para- 

 graphs on the vain woman who wears a bird in her hat; but not a 

 word, no, not a syllable on the cruel man who kills birds for mere pas- 

 time or the gratification of appetite. All this hue and cry about the 

 killing of birds for millinery purposes is a mistake. The real birds worn 

 on hats and bonnets are very small in number. There is one firm in 

 New York city employing four hundred women and girls who manufac- 

 ture bird ornaments exclusively; they use nothing but the feathers of 

 barn yard fowls, which are blacked and colored, thereby giving the 

 poultry man a market for his otherwise unsalable feathers. 



I feel like saying with the farmer, when his little child had wan- 

 dered, unknown to him, into the uncut wheat field; he seeing a bird 

 fluttering ahead of him, stopped his team to look for its nest, so as to 

 avoid destroying it, found his baby sitting by the nest watching the 

 little birds. As he covered her face with kisses he said, God bless the 

 birds, and so say I, and let all the horticulturists in the nation say 

 amen. 



