352 THE BEGINNER IN POULTRY 



Here are the boy, the corn, the chicken ; here, fac- 

 similes of the forest songsters, the sportsman's delight, the 

 cawing pests of the farmyard and field ; here, the cotton- 

 tail, the wind-shielded alfalfa, the velvet bean, with its 

 close-bunched nodule of nitrogen-gathering roots ; here 

 the Illinois corn exhibit (high credit mark to our boys) 

 and the Minnesota flax field, which may furnish, when 

 its prime mission is fulfilled, a lesser help in the residues 

 from the crushed seed, known to us as oil meal. The 

 Great Horned Owl and the Carson Meadow Mouse may be 

 as wide apart as the opposite borders of our land. Even 

 from beyond the seas come some of these enemies, and all 

 affect the welfare of the poultryman, through his fowls. 



Some above -are his enemies ; some, such intimate 

 friends that without them he could hardly be a poultry- 

 man. They sustain life in his flocks ; they keep the 

 balance between friend and foe in Nature, a destruction 

 of which always means disaster to man. 



The flax, the corn, the alfalfa, the cabbage, the field peas, 

 must furnish food ; the velvet bean and the Canada field 

 pea turned under, enrich the ground for the bumper crops 

 that make it worth the poultryman's while to raise his own 

 truck and grain, at least in part. The rabbit, the meadow 

 mouse, alas ! have much to their discredit ; but even the 

 hawk and the owl, the crow and the jay, though destructive 

 in part, can be proved even more beneficial, so that the gov- 

 ernment now urges the protection of all but a few like the 

 Sharp-shinned Hawk, the Cooper Hawk, and the Great 

 Horned Owl; while the family cat is considered a greater 

 sinner than " all the native natural enemies combined." 



While the genuine Beginner is not likely enough to 

 screw his courage so high as to need warning to let 



