BIRDS 



enormous yearly harvests. In fact, New Zealand is 

 famed throughout the world for its bountiful and 

 unprecedented harvests of grain. 



The average man reasons from effect to cause in 

 a very superficial way. The New Zealand farmer, for 

 instance, saw the sparrow eating his grain. The 

 bird, therefore, stood condemned. It was stealing 

 some of his property. His mind was aflame with the 

 desire for revenge. He did not pause to consider 

 why he had such a heavy crop of grain. If he did 

 he would, perchance, have realised it was because of 

 the absence of caterpillars and noxious weeds, and 

 that the sparrow was largely responsible for this 

 desirable state of things. 



The farmer willingly pays his human labourers 

 their hire, and carefully feeds and cares for his draught 

 animals ; but when the bird takes five or perhaps 

 ten per cent, of the wages it is entitled to, the short- 

 sighted husbandman is loud in his complaints against 

 the " impudent thefts " of his wageless labourers. 

 Not a grain will he willingly give to the bird that 

 has helped him. 



A typical instance came to my notice in Natal. 

 A farmer of my acquaintance growled loud and long 

 at the birds which ate his corn. He took me round a 

 great field of ripening corn and pointed out the 

 damage seed-eating birds had done. Yes, true enough 

 the grain had been eaten along the fringes of the field. 

 The evidence was conclusive to the farmer, so he, his 

 sons, and servants made war on the birds ; they 

 were shot, trapped, snared, and their nests destroyed. 



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