259 



gone against cooperative action, to found agricultural organiza- 

 tion societies simply and solely for the purpose of teaching people 

 who do not understand cooperation how to organize cooperative 

 associations for every agricultural purpose ; and I happen to know 

 that they are coming to this view in the United States and in 

 Canada, and that schemes are on foot for training organizers to 

 start cooperative movements in these countries. I believe that 

 at the Tropical Agricultural College which is about to be founded 

 somewhere in the Empire, in order that teachers qualified to teach 

 scientific principles of agriculture should be able to learn how to 

 apply those principles to tropical conditions, it is highly im- 

 portant that agricultural cooperation should be taught in this 

 college, and that the agricultural organizer, even if he has learnt 

 his business, as he can learn it in these islands, should go there 

 and learn how to organize in the wholly different conditions of 

 the tropical countries. 



ECONOMIC VALUE OE BIRDS. 



By F. L. Washburn, Minnesota State Entomologist. 



With a total production of approximately $9,000,000,000 worth 

 of agricultural and forestry products in the United States, which 

 products suffer a loss of about $800,000,000 every year through 

 the voraciousness of insect pests, it is not to be wondered at that 

 anything which tends to decrease that loss by which our nation is 

 robbed each year, is of special interest. It is the work of the 

 economic entomologists to restore to the agricultural classes as 

 much as possible of this loss, and, by their researches, to place 

 citizens on their guard against insect enemies. They have been 

 reasonably successful in their efforts, as shown by the large ap- 

 propriations for this work made by federal and state govern- 

 ments. Massachusetts, for example, has used, in the past, $150,- 

 000 annually to combat the gypsy moth, to which must be added 

 approximately $100,000 spent by private citizens in that State, 

 and $10,000 contributed by the United States government. New 

 Jersey is on record as spending $350,000 a year in fighting mos- 

 quitoes alone. Losses from the San Jose scale, coddling moth, 

 Hessian fly, chinch bugs, and grasshoppers have been materially 

 reduced through the work of our entomologists, who have also 

 lessened by nearly or quite half, the $100,000,000 loss on stored 

 products, such as mill stuff's, fruit, cotton, woolens, etc., suffered 

 each year in the United States. 



In considering the work of entomologists, however, we must 

 not overlook the value of our birds — many of them wrongly 

 suspected of being without any redeeming cjuality — in keeping in 

 check the hordes of insects and four-footed vermin that prey 

 upon the crops of farmers, gardeners, and orchardists. The 

 amount of insects eaten l)y birds and brought to their young by 

 parent birds is almost incredible. For example, 76 per cent of 



