60 



discouraged seamen were on the verge of mutiny, and might 

 have compelled Columbus to return to Spain, had not some 

 small land birds finally come aboard unwearied and singing. 

 The course of the vessel was changed to follow the direction of 

 their flight, and the voyage was thus shortened 200 miles and 

 ended in the discovery of a new world. 1 



CASH VALUE OF BIRDS' SERVICES. 



Many calculations have been made to determine the actual 

 cash value of birds to the farmers, but, owing to the many 

 factors to be considered, such figures in the nature of the case 

 may invite criticism. Dr. W. T. Hornaday asserts that each 

 woodpecker in the United States is worth $20, and each nut- 

 hatch or chickadee from $5 to $10, 2 but he does not tell us how 

 he arrives at these figures. 



On December 12, 1907, President Roosevelt sent a message 

 to Congress transmitting a report of the Secretary of Agri- 

 culture on the work of the Biological Survey. In this report it 

 is estimated that a single species, Swainson's hawk, a bird 

 inhabiting only a limited region in the western United States, 

 saves the farmers of that country $57,600 each year by destroy- 

 ing grasshoppers, and this is by no means the most common or 

 most useful of American hawks. After the breeding season 

 these birds collect in large flocks on the western plains, where 

 they feed mainly on grasshoppers, locusts and crickets. 3 In- 

 cluding the field mice that they eat, these hawks are estimated 

 to save the western farmer $117,000 annually. 



In 1885 the State of Pennsylvania passed a bounty act under 

 which in a year and a half $90,000 were paid mainly for the 

 destruction of hawks and owls, the bounty being 50 cents each. 

 Dr. C. Hart Merriam, then chief ornithologist and mammalogist 

 of the United States Department of Agriculture, estimated the 

 value of the chickens killed annually in Pennsylvania by hawks 

 and owls in a year and a half to be $1,875, and showed that the 

 State of Pennsylvania had paid out $90,000 to save its farmers 

 a loss on poultry of less than $2,000. His figures also showed 

 that each hawk and owl was worth on the average $20 a year 



1 Papers presented to World's Congress on Ornithology, 1896, p. 181. 



Hornaday, W. T.: Our Vanishing Wild Life, 1913, p. 213. 



Sixtieth Congress, First Session, Senate Document No. 132, 1907, p. 3. 



