PREFATORY NOTES. 



Questions regarding the value or inutility of the domestic cat, 

 and problems connected with limiting its more or less unwelcome 

 outdoor activities, are causing much dissension. The discussion 

 has reached an acute stage. Medical men, game protectors and 

 bird lovers call on legislators to enact restrictive laws. Then 

 ardent cat lovers rouse themselves for combat. In the excite- 

 ment of partisanship many loose and ill-considered statements 

 are made. Some recently published assertions for and against 

 the cat, freely bandied about, have absolutely no foundation in 

 fact. The author of this bulletin has been misquoted so much by 

 partisans on both sides of the controversy that in writing a series 

 of papers on the natural enemies of birds it has seemed best, in 

 justice to the cat and its friends and foes, as w^ell as to himself, 

 to gather and publish obtainable facts regarding the economic 

 position of the creature and the means for its control. 



The first publication of the State Board of Agriculture that re- 

 ferred particularly to the natural enemies of birds was a special 

 report on the "Decrease of Certain Birds and its Causes," published 

 in the fifty-second annual report of the Board in 1904. A paper on 

 the English sparrow appeared in the fifty-eighth annual report, and 

 one on the starling in the fifty-ninth. These two papers, revised 

 and enlarged, have been republished in 1915 as circulars 48 and 

 45 respectively. Bulletin No. 1 of the present series, already in 

 its second edition, treats of the rat as an enemy of mankind and 

 birds, and deals with the means of suppressing it. The rat, al- 

 though of less importance than the cat as a bird killer, was con- 

 sidered first, for people who intend to dispose of their cats need 

 first to know how to rid their premises of rats. 



This paper has been written in the hope that it will interest 

 and inform not only cat lovers and bird lovers, but that large 

 part of the public whose attention is engaged at times by both 

 cats and birds. An attempt has been made to avoid unnecessary 

 scientific verbiage and to set forth the facts plainly and con- 

 vincingly. 



The Houghton-Mifflin Company of Boston and the Lothrop, 

 Lee & Shepard Company of New York have given permission 



