80 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



Forty years ago, if tradition speaks truly, no one 

 would easily have believed it possible that any of 

 the hawks and owls of the United States were 

 otherwise than highly injurious to man, and there- 

 fore deserving of instant death. But we live and 

 learn. The shot-guns, scalpels and microscopes of 

 the Department of Agriculture have placed the 

 hawks and owls, all save five or six, in an entirely 

 different class from that which had been theirs from 

 the beginning. To-day it is only the benighted 

 states of America that fail to protect the hawks 

 ^nd owls, all save a very few species that will be 

 considered, on a later occasion, as pests. 



The valuable services rendered by the useful 

 hawks and owls consist in the destruction of rats, 

 mice, gophers, shrews and moles. Those small and 

 elusive mammals must be kept in check by their 

 natural enemies, especially the nocturnal birds of 

 prey and the small carnivorous mammals, 



By way of illustration, take the record of a 

 famous pair of Barn Owls that once nested in one 

 of the towers of the Smithsonian building at Wash- 

 ington. Conditions were such that the pellets of 

 indigestible animal matter disgorged by those two 

 birds were accidentally preserved for an entire year, 

 and thereby yielded a valuable record. Two hun- 

 dred pellets were collected, consisting of bones, hair 

 and feathers, and it was found that they contained 

 453 skulls which represented the following mam- 

 mals: 225 meadow mice, 179 house mice, 20 rats, 2 



