on the necessity of State action for protection of ivilcl birds. 127



or ten times the original weight ; when 20 days old it weighs three

grains, or sixty times its original weight; when 30 days old its weight

has increased to thirty-one grains, or 620 times the original weight ;

when 40 days old it weighs ninety grains, or 1800 times its original

weight; and when 56 days old its weight has risen to 207 grains, or

4140 times the original weight.


When 30 days old this caterpillar will have consumed about

90 grains of food, but by the time it is fully grown, namely 56 days, it

will have consumed not less than three-quarters of a pound of oak-

leaves. Thus the food taken by a single caterpillar in 56 days equals in

weight 86,000 times the original weight of the animal. Well might

Longfellow say of the birds:


“ They are the winged wardens of your farms,


Who from the cornfields drive the insidious foe,


And from your harvests keep a hundred harms.”


In the interests of agriculture, fruit-growing and forestry

surely the conservation of this wild life is worthy of State attention.

We do not simply mean the passing of an Act of Parliament for the

protection of certain species, but a daily study of their habits and

activities, and all their intricate relations to mankind.


“But what about birds that are injurious ? ” If those that

are beneficial should be protected, surely those that are injurious

should be destroyed. Our knowledge as yet of the feeding habits of

wild birds is so fragmentary that it would be dangerous to make the

unqualified statement that any species of wild bird is wholly injurious.

Some are partly so, due in all probability to the fact that they are

too numerous, as, for example, the House Sparrow, the Wood Pigeon,

the Starling, etc., but there is reason to believe that if these species

were much less numerous than at present, the good they would do

would more than compensate for any harm they might inflict. It is

therefore incumbent upon the State to walk very warily when it

proceeds to withhold protection, or to frame repressive measures for

the destruction of any species. In a like manner the granting of

protection to a bird at present generally regarded as beneficial may

lead to an undue increase in its numbers, and within a very short

time it will prove equally injurious. The problem is a most difficult

one. Those who demand all-round uniform protection are equally as



