PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 139 



Before we leave this section of our subject, I wish 

 to add a pointed word of warning. 



There are very many confirmed destroyers of 

 wild life who lose no opportunity to charge up to 

 other causes the evil results of their own practices. 

 For example, the relentless quail-killer will look 

 you squarely in the face, and with never a blush 

 mantling his cheek, he will tell you "the hard win- 

 ters kill more quail than sportsmen do." The 

 squirrel- shooter will declare that birds are scarce 

 because the squirrels rob their nests and eat their 

 young; and this in a region where now there is only 

 one wild squirrel to every ten square miles. 



Do not accept seriously any fantastic statement 

 or theory regarding alleged great damages that 

 have been inflicted upon valuable interests by wild 

 birds or mammals, until indisputable evidence has 

 been laid before you. Out in Arizona, the desert 

 men say, "Snake stories don't go unless you pro- 

 duce the rattles." With us stories of havoc and 

 destruction by "pest" birds and "pest" mammals 

 "don't go" unless we can see good proof. During 

 our late unpleasantness in Congress with the 

 feather millinery trade (1913) , our opponents very 

 strenuously insisted upon their right to import the 

 feathers and skins of birds that had been killed as 

 "pests." We met that claim, and vanquished it, by 

 demanding to be shown any country in the world 

 that sends forth a noteworthy commercial feather 

 product from birds that have been killed solely 



