The Bulletin. 7 



some acceptable food for a pair of robins which had a nest in a 

 neighbor's yard, and it was also appreciated by two or three catbirds 

 which came from some place nearby. As soon as the sweet corn 

 was matured the red-headed woodpeckers and a large blackbird 

 (grackle) visited the garden daily. But I had no desire to interrupt 

 them. They were my guests, and by their notes, bright colors and 

 vivacious activities gave pleasure to my family and friends who 

 watched them. Then who would think of taking note of what a 

 guest eats! Besides this, I knew that during the greater part of 

 the year these birds were of much value to my neighbors and me as 

 destroyers of insects. 



Some years ago it was a common sight in North Carolina to see 

 men and boys of evenings shooting for mere sport the bullbat or 

 nighthawk. Often they were shot simply for the fun of seeing them 

 fall. I have found these birds, wounded and unable to fly, lying- 

 suffering and helpless among the weeds, twenty-four hours after they 

 had been wantonly and thoughtlessly shot down from the air. And 

 yet these birds are so perfectly harmless and so valuable as insect 

 destroyers that in thirty-eight States of the Union they are protected 

 by law. 



Whenever man interferes with the laws of nature he is liable to 

 suffer for it. It is one of the divine and absolutely unchangeable 

 laws of nature that birds are set apart to serve as a great natural 

 check upon the hordes of insects which, like a scourge, are ever 

 falling upon the plant life with unabated fury. To kill the birds is 

 to allow these pests to increase. So thoughtlessly and so unceasingly 

 have we killed our birds that every year in many sections the prob- 

 lem of how to raise crops successfully is becoming a most serious 

 one. From time to time thousands of Southern farmers have 

 gathered to discuss the question of what can possibly be done 

 to check the onslaught of the cotton boll weevil. We now know 

 that thirty or forty species feed upon this great plague. 



Some of our government experts who have made a close study 

 of the subject of bird destruction and the results, tell us that one- 

 tenth of the entire agricultural products of eastern United States is 

 annually a total loss from the ravages of insects. This percentage, too, 

 we are told, is on the increase, owing to the decreasing numbers of 

 birds. That many birds are far less numerous than formerly, any 

 observant man over forty years of age will readily testify. 



The early inhabitants of New England felt that they had a 

 grievance against the blackbirds for eating corn in the fields; so 

 laws were passed offering "a bounty of threepence a dozen for dead 

 maize thieves." Dr. Benjamin Franklin is quoted by Peter Kahn, 

 ;i Swedish naturalist, as saying that the blackbirds were thiis ex- 

 terminated, "I. nt us in (lie summer of 1749 an immense quantity of 



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