Bird Notes and News 



85 



laid down the axiom, " No nation has a 

 right to promote unjustifiable slaughter 

 by maintaining the market for its pro 

 ducts," and he added ; — 



" The new and alarming slaughter con- 

 ditions of to-day demand new and drastic 

 measures for their suppression. No half- 

 way measures will serve. The only argument 

 that can be advanced by the trade is — ^the 

 trade want business, the merchants and 



employees want the money. The same 

 plea is made by every producer of opium 

 and counterfeit money, but opium selling 

 and counterfeiting are sternly forbidden by 

 the laws of the United States. It is safe to 

 say that an entire discontinuance of the 

 importation of the plumage of wild birds 

 would not actually throw out of employment 

 a single industrial worker. If feathers 

 cannot be used on women's hats, the labour 

 of women's hands will produce other 

 ornaments to take their place." 



Economic Ornithology. 



WOODPECKERS AND FORESTRY. 



The value of Woodpeckers to the forester 

 is the subject of an article on " Wood- 

 peckers in South Hampshire," in the 

 Field of April 19th, 1913. The writer 

 observes : — 



" All CroA^Ti woods. King's liberties, the 

 New Forest, and other well-drained and over- 

 cleared woodlands offer few attractions to 

 these knights of the chisel. There gnarled 

 and disreputable old age makes room for 

 youth and respectability, and the natural 

 nesting-sites and favourite feeding -grounds 

 are persistently done away with, to the detri- 

 ment and eventual exclusion of these 

 protective guardians. 



" No birds, save Owls, in any civilised 

 country deserve State protection more than 

 these hole borers, and those who are practi- 

 cally connected with the business of forestry 

 worked to pay, are keenly aware of the great 

 good to arboriculture done by the Wood- 

 peckers. As the Rook and Starling are 

 the recognised guardians of all pasturage 

 and cattle lands, destroying the vermin 

 which infest them, so Woodpeckers are the 

 custodians and caretakers of forest growth, 

 and feed on the beetles, grubs, cockchafers, 

 and ants therein from d&\\y mom to dusky 

 eve. 



" Throughout Germany it has long been 

 recognised that the protection of these birds 

 is sound political economy. Laws have been 

 passed in Saxony not only to protect their 

 nests, but to preserve any decayed trees 

 likely to be of use to the Woodpecker family. 

 ' Birds animate and ornament the country 



they visit or occupy, and are absolute and 

 necessary aids to agriculture.' " 



Besides leaving some old trees for the 

 Woodpeckers, the advisabihty suggests 

 itself of providing nesting-boxes of the 

 Berlepsch make, constructed in exact 

 imitation of the bird's natural hole. 

 These are suppUed by the R.S.P.B., and 

 it is especially interesting to know that 

 a Great Spotted Woodpecker (a much 

 rarer species than the Yaffle) has taken 

 possession of one of them in Richmond 

 Park this spring. 



THE "SPARROW" CLUB. 



The Fruit, Flower, and Vegetable Trades' 

 Jotirnal comments as follows on the delu- 

 sive " Sparrow Club," usually the product 

 of some Boeotian village of the wilds, 

 which gives awards for the destruction 

 of miscellaneous small birds : — 



" It is passing strange that with increased 

 public funds available for the furtherance 

 of agricultural study and a general movement 

 towards the education of the masses, little 

 or nothing is being done to bring the residents 

 of the country side into closer communion 

 with the workings of Nature. This fact 

 is impressed upon our mind when reading 

 of the records made by the so-called rat 

 and sparrow clubs throughout the country. 

 .... War against vermin may have much 

 to commend it, but it will be a sorry day for 

 the countryside when a campaign of exter- 

 mination is allowed to be carried out against 



