BIRDS 



necessary to employ compulsion in the form of legisla- 

 tion. Until the education of children takes a more 

 practical turn, the human race will continue to blunder 

 on and evolve to higher intellectual and spiritual planes 

 at an exasperatingly slow pace. 



Insects have hosts of enemies other than our 

 feathered allies ; but if we exterminated the native 

 birds, the human population of South Africa would, 

 in a few years, be reduced to a condition of starvation. 

 The fecundity of many species of insects is staggering 

 to the imagination of even an astronomer. For in- 

 stance, one hop aphis, if allowed to breed unchecked, 

 would develop thirteen generations in a single year, and 

 at the end of the twelfth generation would have bred 

 an army of ten sixtillions of aphides. 



Forbush has worked it out, and says if this uncount- 

 able army was marshalled in line ten to the inch, it 

 would extend as far as the great star Sirius, which is 

 so far away that if a man could travel at the rate of 

 light, which is 186,000 miles per second, the journey 

 from earth would take him eight years. 



Kirtland, too, has carefully worked out the rate of 

 breeding of the gypsy moth, and states that it a pair 

 of these moths and their progeny were allowed to breed 

 unchecked for eight years, they would strip the entire 

 United States of America of vegetation. 



A Colorado beetle or potato bug would, if un- 

 checked, multiply in one season to the number of 

 60,000,000. It can thus be realised by even the 

 dullest intellect, that at this rate of multiplication the 

 Colorado beetle would very quickly exterminate the 



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