Editorial 



157 



2^irtr=1Lore 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 

 Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributiner Editor, MABELOSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol. XIX Published June 1,1917 No. 3 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 



Price in the United States, one dollar a year; outside the 

 United States, one dollar and twenty-five cents, postage paid. 



COPYRIGHTED. 1917. BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Two in the Hand 



The making of gardens, large and small, 

 now occupies the mind and spare time of 

 so many country dwellers that we have 

 thought it well to devote this number of 

 Bird-Lore largely to a type of gardening 

 which our new-born enthusiasm for pota- 

 toes and other vegetables should not 

 cause us to overlook. 



We must not forget that if we make 

 potatoes and squash grow where only 

 grass grew before, we are not only adding 

 to the food-supply of the nation but also 

 to that of potato-beetles and squash- 

 bugs. 



We should, therefore, make an alliance 

 with the enemies of beetle and bug for 

 war on the common foe. If, with that 

 misguided instinct for 'cleaning-up,' 

 which leads a farmer to leave no vestige 

 of hedgerow or undergrowth about his 

 land, our fields offer neither cover nor 

 nesting-site to our proposed allies, we can- 

 not expect them to camp with us. 



It is now too late to repair the damage 

 due to lack of foresight, and to a greater 

 or less extent we must pay the penalty of 

 unpreparedness. But at the worst we can 

 still make our farms and gardens more 

 habitable and attractive to the natural 

 protectors of our crops by supplying them 

 with drinking- and bathing-pools near 

 which may be placed piles of brush for 

 shelter and, possibly, also nesting-places, 

 and by controlling the activities of ma- 

 rauding cats. It would not, indeed, be more 



than fair if the terms of our alliance should 

 include an agreement whereby we would 

 promise to reduce the vagrant cat popu- 

 lation in return for a proportionate- 

 reduction by the birds, in the ranks of 

 insects injurious to vegetation. 



A more fundamental and even more 

 important type of bird-gardening has 

 been pursued during the past season by 

 the National Association of Audubon 

 Societies in forming Junior Societies. 

 Through the widely ramifying system it 

 has established and the cooperation of 

 bird-lovers throughout the country, it has 

 sowed the seeds of a knowledge of the 

 beauty and value of birds in the minds 

 of nearly 250,000 children. 



Who can estimate the value of the crop 

 which time will here develop? If in some 

 cases the seed fails to germinate or pro- 

 duce a healthy plant, in others there will 

 grow the hardy perennial to last as long as 

 the life that bears it. 



The function of education, says Herbert 

 Spencer, is "to prepare us for complete 

 living," and any form of instruction which 

 adds to our fund of information and shows 

 the way to exhaustless stores of knowl- 

 edge and of ennobling sources of pleasure 

 may surely be called education of the 

 highest order. 



The National Association has much to 

 its credit but to our mind no work it has 

 ever done equals in importance this yearly 

 placing of the feet of nearly a quarter of 

 a million children on the first steps to 

 bird-study and showing them the open 

 gate through which lies a lasting associa- 

 tion with the most attractive of Nature's 

 animate forms. 



Our thanks are due the gentlemen who 

 have consented to cooperate with us in 

 conducting our new subdepartment 'The 

 Season.' We hope in time to add to their 

 number, when, if the ever-soaring prices 

 of everything connected with the making 

 of a magazine do not prohibit the use of 

 the necessary space, we trust that this 

 department will present a bi-monthly 

 view of the more characteristic phases of 

 bird-life throughout the country. 



