CHAPTER XVII 



Shall We Pay Our Debt? 



A LL ornithologists have agreed for a long time 

 /\ past that we owed much of our comfort to 

 jL m. the birds. To-day, it is being generally 

 conceded that if every form of bird life were swept 

 from the face of the earth "at one fell swoop" man 

 could not long survive. This will seem extreme 

 to those who have not made a study of the 

 situation, but if anyone having access to cultivated 

 country and villages will keep his eyes open and 

 think out the subject to its ultimate limit, he will 

 see that the destruction of all plant life is inevitable 

 without the work of the birds in its preservation. 



The most intimate part of my life work among 

 the birds has been at their nesting time, when I 

 was able to see exactly what was collected by the 

 parents in rearing their young. All of my life I 

 have been deeply interested in this subject because 

 much of my life I have been in a position where I 

 was forced to feed and care for young birds per- 

 sonally or to let them die; so for the birds of my 

 location I can speak with authority as to their 

 feeding habits, in so far as they can be followed with 

 the eye or the field glass. It is my self-appointed 



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