Economic Reasons for Protection 89 



pasture. Just as the sheep owners began to 

 feel that they would be obliged to sell all their 

 sheep to save them from starvation, down came 

 flocks of spoonbills and cranes which with the 

 assistance of a flock of starlings, soon completed 

 the destruction of the locusts and saved the day. 



Herons, of course, when conditions are favor- 

 able for them, destroy a good many fish; but 

 these birds are so picturesque that, save in very 

 exceptional cases, it will do us good to make some 

 sacrifice to have them with us. A stately heron, 

 fishing on the edge of a lonely pool, is a pleasant 

 memory to be cherished through life ; a dead one 

 upholstered and set up in a living-room is a 

 perpetual reproach. 



Many of the sandpipers and curlews are fa- 

 mous as destroyers of insects, and the smaller 

 ones, at least, should be spared on this account. 

 Professor Samuel Aughey, whose extensive and 

 painstaking investigations have done so much to 

 make us appreciate the value of Nebraska birds, 

 once took from the stomachs of six spotted 

 sandpipers 233 insects, ninety-one of which were 

 locusts. The farmer lost a valuable friend when 

 the Esquimau curlew disappeared and he will 

 lose another if the upland plover passes, as it 

 will unless given powerful protection by law and 

 sentiment. This bird is used for food, but is 



