ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 71 



on two widely different necessities. The grouse 

 should be saved and increased as a food supply, and 

 the bob- white quail should be protected because of 

 its value as a destroyer of insects and the seeds of 

 noxious weeds. Let us first consider the quail, 

 because it is nearest. 



Probably 99 per cent of the farmers of this coun- 

 try, and 100 per cent of the sportsmen and gunners 

 outside New York, regard the common Virginia 

 Quail , or Bob-White 3 as a bird of no economic 

 value save when it is shot and eaten. To this enor- 

 mous army of enemies, the bird is only a question of 

 meat ounces on the table. And yet, thanks to the 

 painstaking investigations of Mrs. Nice, of Clark 

 University, and Professor Judd, of the United 

 States Department of Agriculture, we now know 

 that for the smaller pests of the farm the bob-white 

 is the most wonderful engine of destruction ever 

 put together of flesh and blood. I think it is fairly 

 beyond question that of all the birds that influence 

 the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of 

 North America, the common quail is the most 

 valuable! 



It remains on the farm throughout the year. 

 When insects are most numerous, bob-white de- 

 votes to them his entire time. He destroys them 

 during sixteen to eighteen hours of the summer day. 

 When the insects are gone, he turns his attention 

 to the weeds that are striving to seed down the 

 farmer's fields for another year. He consumes, as 



