100 



Bird Notes and News 



by fair and patient observation and 

 common-sense logic. 



To see the mischief done by certain 

 species during a brief period of the year 

 is easy ; to misconceive and imagine 

 an enormous amount which is not the 

 bird's doing or which has not the ruinous 

 effect anticipated, is still easier ; to write 

 newspaper contributions founded on 

 ancient theories unchecked by personal 

 knowledge, and to calculate that men's 

 food is coming to an end because a gull 

 eats so many herring-fry in a day or a 

 finch has been shot with so many grains 

 of corn in his crop, is unfortunately 

 easiest of all. 



One of the many objects of the Royal 

 Society for the Protection of Birds, and 

 one peculiarly necessary at this time, is, 

 then, to educate the public to an intelligent 

 interest in this essential question : not 

 to call for the unthinking protection of 

 all species any more than the heedless 



persecution of all, but, in the best 

 interest of the land-cultivator himself, 

 to urge careful consideration of the 

 unique position of birds in the economy 

 of the nation and its food-supply. 



" The majority of insects and ticks," 

 writes Sir H. H. Johnston in the Nine- 

 teenth Century and After, " stand out in 

 contrast to the other members of the 

 animal kingdom by the direct conflict of 

 their interests with those of mankind. 



" Man himself — especially and before 

 all, man of the highest developed, 

 Nordic type, — has wantonly destroyed 

 his beautiful and faithful allies the birds, 

 has stupidly put out of existence many 

 and many a harmless and useful reptile 

 that only lived to devour insects and 

 ticks. He is now paying the penalty 

 in the present alarming spread of germ- 

 diseases, in the diminution of his animal 

 and vegetable food supply, which are due 

 to the activities of the insect world." 



The Plume-Trade. 



Whatever may or may not be luxury or 

 extravagance, and what legitimate expendi- 

 ture at the present crisis of the nation, there 

 is at least one form of outlay that is wholly 

 and absolutely wasteful and illegitimate, — 

 the purchase and wearing of hats and head- 

 dresses decorated with the bodies and wings 

 and breeding-plumage of wild birds. As 

 each autumn comes round, the trade and the 

 milliners make the same effort to push the 

 " osprey," the Paradise-plume, the Tern wing, 

 etc., and tell the old story of the " made up " 

 bird and the " chicken " wing, and of the 

 " osprey " that is alternately " artificial " and 

 made of feathers moulted in South Africa or 

 from birds domesticated in India. Women 



have accepted as many falsehoods on this 

 subject as even the Germans could supply ; 

 but the feathered headgear remains the 

 Hun-headgear, typifying slaughter of the 

 helpless and harmless ; the " osprey " still 

 stands for the Baby-killer among the shot- 

 out homes of Heron and Egret. 



The United States Biological Survey has 

 been investigating the depredations of the 

 boll-weevil, which has frequently wrought 

 such havoc in the cotton -fields of the southern 

 States that many planters have had to give 

 up raising cotton crops. The Survey reports 

 that twenty-eight species of birds feed on 

 the pest to a greater or less extent, the principal 



