414 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



strikingly beneficial or injurious to the crops of farmers. The stomachs 

 of over 7000 birds, taken at different seasons of the year, have been 

 -already analyzed and the contents determined, while some 12,000 are 

 still unexamined. The results in some cases have been remarkable, 

 showing in several notable instances that popular ideas regarding the 

 injurious effects of certain birds were wholly mistaken, and that they 

 have been the victims of an unjust persecution. This has been found 

 to be especially the case with hawks and owls, for the slaughter of 

 which many states give bounties. Pennsylvania in two years gave 

 over $100,000 in hawk and owl bounties. Examination of the stomachs 

 of these birds prove conclusively that 95 per cent of their food was 

 field mice, grasshoppers, crickets, etc., which was infinitely more in- 

 jurious to farm crops than they." It was found that only five kinds 

 of hawks and owls ever touched poultry, and then only to a very 

 limited extent. 



He also says that the crow is not so black as he has been painted 

 by the farmers. The charges against the crow are that he eats corn and 

 destroys the eggs and poultry and wild birds. Examinations of their 

 stomachs showed that they eat noxious insects and other animals, and 

 that although 25 per cent of their food is corn it is mostly waste corn 

 picked up in the fall and winter. With regard to eggs, it was found 

 that the shells were eaten to a very limited extent for the lime. They 

 eat ants, beetles, caterpillars, bugs, flies, etc., which do much damage. 

 In many cases popular ideas are found to be untrue. In case of the 

 king bird, killed by the farmer under the impression that it eats bees 

 it was found he ate only drones and robber flies which themselves feed 

 on bees and which destroy more bees in a day than the kingbird does 

 in a year. The cuckoos are also found to be very useful birds in this 

 country. He is not depraved like his European namesake, but a very 

 decent fellow who does much good in the destruction of insects. 



Who has not noticed the disappearance of the little birds from 

 our fields and berry bushes since the deadly Bordeaux and other simi- 

 lar mixtures have become so universally used. Surely our little friends 

 are leaving us, and not only they but many of our insect friends that 

 daily feast on the insects that destroy the products of our labor. The 

 diligent and untiring search of these little birds in the trees set me to 

 thinking whether or not we were not poisoning more of our friends 

 than enemies. Sure it is that there is a rapid increase of noxious in- 

 sects, and the time is already here when the chances for a paying crop 

 hang very largely on the thoroughness with which we spread the deadly 

 poison over the foliage of trees, vines, bushes and plants. Nothing 

 escapes; everything has its enemies. It cannot be denied that the 



