6O PROCEEDINGS OF THE BOLL WEEVIL CONVENTION. 



services of the birds to man especially to the farmers has become so 

 apparent that no other conclusion can be formed than that tney are in- 

 estimable. 



These observations having increased to such extent and to such im- 

 portance the Department of Agriculture at Washington took up the work 

 on the lines of impartial scientific investigation and is publishing at fre- 

 quent inteivals pamphlets showing the result of the careful study of their 

 trained observers. 



In one of such pamphlets they publish the story of the investigation of 

 one of our most inconspicuous birds, the tree sparrow, and its importance 

 will sanction a re-telling. 



The observations were made in the State of Iowa, in which State the 

 tree Sparrow is found during five winter months. In the first place, 

 the observers made a very careful canvass of the State to determine the 

 number of the birds, and arrived at comparatively accurate results. They 

 then killed many of the birds and carefully analyzed the contents of their 

 craws and intestines, with the result that after all these painstaking 

 measures were completed, the observers were able to say that the tree 

 sparrows in the State of Iowa were consuming during the five months 

 they were resident there, the enormous amount of 1,700,000 pounds of 

 iveed seeds. 



You may not attach such importance to this statement as the facts war- 

 rant, but you will readily see the point 1 am trying to make if I put the 

 statement in another form. Suppose the papers published the news that 

 I had 30,000 bushels of weed seeds and that I intended to send out the 

 seeds in wagons to be sown broadcast all over the State. You very well 

 know that such a plan would come to a sudden ending and that my pres- 

 ence would be hastened elsewhere. 



So much for a bird not usually placed in the class of the farmer's val- 

 ued allies. Let us now take one of our more highly organized birds, the 

 mocking bird, and see where its economic value lies. It is a very well 

 known fact that the mocking bird eats moths, especially the moths of the 

 boll worm, and it is within the bounds of ordinary observation to say 

 that a pair of mocking birds will feed their young with 75 of these moths 

 per day. It is also within the bounds of truthfulness to say that each 

 one of these moths is the progenitor of one hundred descendants the first 

 year. We can therefore say that by simple preventive measures one pair 

 of mocking birds would in one day of their nesting season rid the world 

 of 7500 boll worms, and as the nesting season will last two weeks and 

 upwards, the total number of boll worms prevented from appearing the 

 following season may be placed to the credit of this one pair of mock- 

 ing birds to the astonishing number of one hundred thousand. 



There was recently held in this city a convention of nut growers and 

 those gentlemen discussed their problems in much the same manner as 



