200 



SMALL ANIMALS AND INSECTS. 



[CnAP. II. 



there are many hundreds of thousands of acres, utterly unsuited to any other 

 sort of culture or stocking, that there is an important department in the 

 National Agricultural Society of that great and enlightened nation, the solo 

 duty of wiiich is to superintend the reproduction on the waste lands and 

 waters of France of the native species of game which have gradually become 

 e.\tinet ; to promote the introduction on the same lands of such foreign wild 

 animals, valuable for food, as may appear to be suited, by their habits and 

 the character of the climates to which they originally belonged, for naturaliza- 

 tion in France ; and, lastlj-, to encourage and enforce, by means of premiums 

 for success and stringent protective legislation, the maintenance of such 

 stocks of game, both quadruped and winged, as shall realize to tlie ])ropri- 

 ctors and to the state an abundant return of nutritious and cheap food from 

 lands nntillable, unfitted for pasturage, and in fact worthless for any purpose 

 but that of raising game. 



At the same time we, in America, arc suffering our infinitely larger 

 number of um-eclaimed — if not irreclaimable — acres, which formerly swarmed 

 with animal life, and afforded supplies, a few years ago supposed to be 

 inexhaustible, of the choicest varieties of game, to be strii^ped of the last fin, 

 the last hoof or pad, the last feather of the wild tribes, unequaled elsewhere, 

 both in quality and quantity, wiiieh at the time of its discovery rendered 

 America the paradise of Kinn-ods; so that the woods, the fens, the waters 

 are indeed fast becoming uttorl}' barren, useless, and unprofitable wastes. 

 • It is certain that the fact of any farm being well stocked with game is not, 

 in any possible point of view, a disadvantage, even if their value, whether 

 as an article of food or as an object of pleasurable and healthful pursuit be 

 entirely set aside, since the actual ])rofit consequent on their subsistence is 

 gi-cater than the loss from tiie grain which a few of the varieties consume. 

 Besides the insects, many of the game birds are great consumers of weed 

 seeds. The prairie-hens, where they exist in large numbers, do depredate 

 upon corn-fields and stacks of grain ; but even there, it is not a very severe tax 

 to feed them ; and we think that farmers could make the preservation of 

 birds profitable. 



It may be assumed, as a reasonable average, that every former who owns 

 and cultivates a hundred acres of arable land, with from fifty to a hundred 

 of meadow land and pasture, and an equal quantity of woodland, if he 

 ciioose to protect and preserve them, especially if he takes the trouble to 

 erect a few little shelter huts of brushwood and fern in his woodskirts, and 

 to bait them in hard weather with a few bushels of buckwheat, in a good 

 game district where the winters are not too severe, may winter from ten to 

 twenty brace of quail, which may be expected to raise from fifteen to thirty 

 bevies of birds. Each bevy will probably average fifteen birds, which gives 

 a yield of from seventy-five to one hundred brace of quail, to be killed and 

 Ecnt to market in the late autumn or early winter, with the butter, buck- 

 wheat, fat turkeys, and other jn-oduce of the farm. These birds will average 

 twenty-five cents a brace in ordinary seasons, and when game is scarce or 



