Canadian Forestry Journal, September, 1919 



363 



EVERYONE SHOULD BE A BIRD MAN. 



"Do you know that if all our birds were de- 

 stroyed, in three years this continent would be 

 without life? The insects would first eat all 

 vegetable life and then eat us." said Charles P. 

 Shoffner in a public address delivered recently. 

 "Do you know that insects cause a loss of more 

 than $1,200,000,000 every year to the farmers, 

 truck-raisers, and fruit-growers of the Unite-^ 

 States? Whatever affects the producers affects 

 every consumer on the country. You know what 

 will happen if this keeps up much longer: We 

 will all have to go to work. Do you know- 

 that the farmers of the east pay more than 

 $15,000,000 a year for materials to kill the 

 potato bugs? Who pays that? We do — and 

 it is getting so I lift my hat every time I see 

 a potato. Do you know that the cotton boll- 

 weevil causes a yearly loss to the Texas cotton- 

 growers of $50,000,000? Do you know that 

 the apple-producing States pay more than 

 $2,000,000 a year for spraying trees to keep 

 down the San Jose scale-louse and the codling 

 moth? Do you know that many species of cater- 

 pillars eat twice their weight in leaves daily? 

 Do you know that certain flesh-eating larva 

 consumes in twenty-four hours 200 times its 

 original weight? Have you an idea of the re- 

 producing capacity of insects? Do you know 

 that the offspring of one pair of potato bugs, if 

 allowed to increase without molestation, would 

 in one year number more than 600,000,000? Do 

 you know that one pair of the hop-vine aphis is 

 capable of producing through the thirteen gen- 

 erations of the species in one year ten sex- 

 tillions of individuals? Do you know that the 

 unrestricted increase of one pair of the gipsy- 

 moths would in eight years devour all the fol- 

 iage in the United States? Talk of your Roose- 

 veltian families! If ever birth-control is needed, 

 here is a real honest-to-goodness job. 



"I do not know why insects were created, but 

 I do know why the birds were created. It was 

 to keep in check the insects, the pests, and they 

 can do it. In our brilliant career as Americans, 

 and with a strong hold on the thought that the 

 Lord will provide, we have killed just about 

 90 per cent of our birds. Is it any wonder that 

 the ten per cent can not keep down the pests? 

 Insects have appetites, but let me tell you about 

 the birds : 



"A quail taken in Texas had 127 cotton 

 boll-weevils in its craw. Another taken in 

 Pennsylvania had 101 potato bugs. 



"A tree-swallow's stomach contained forty 

 entire chinch-bugs. Two stomachs of pine-sis- 

 kins contained 1,900 black olive-scales and 300 

 plant-lice. A night-hawk had eaten 340 grass- 

 hoppers,, fifty-two bugs, three beetles, and two 

 wasps." 



A "LEAVE-IT-TO-GEORGE" SPIRIT. 



(Correspondence in Toronto Globe.) 



"I was reminded in this incident a fortnight 

 ago in the brief time that my train was chang- 

 ing engines at Schreiber. Immediately east of 

 the village is a mountain the sides and top of 

 which are covered with vegetation. A little 

 way up the side, and in easy reach, fire, that 

 had probably been started by a careless smoker, 

 was just getting under way. Half an hour's 

 work by a dozen idlers about the station would 

 have extinguished the fire. But no one paid 

 any attention to it, and had the dry weather 

 then prevailing continued, the whole mountain 

 side would have been changed from beautiful 

 green to a blackened waste. Indeed the fire 

 might easily have spread much farther, with the 

 result of destroying young timber growth for 

 miles around. Fortunately, nature was kinder 

 than man and a couple of heavy rains in the 

 following week put out the blaze and the only 

 trace left is a brown blotch on a mat of green." 



QUEBEC'S FOREST OUTLAY. 



The Legislature of Quebec has appropriated 

 $100,000 for the provincial forest service and 

 the inspection of lands for the fiscal year ending 

 June 30, 1920: also $7,000 for the mainten" 

 ance of the provincial forest nursery at Ber- 

 thierville. The amounts are very materially 

 supplemented by the expenditures on forest fire 

 protction incurred by the Ottawa River. St. 

 Maurice. Laurentian and Southern St. Lawrence 

 Forest Protective Associations, which patrol the 

 great bulk of the licensed and privately owned 

 timber lands in the province. The expenditures 

 of these four associations on fire protection dur- 

 ing the past year total $177,729. 



The Motion Picture Bureau of Ontario has 

 released through Regal Films. Limited, three 

 copies of "The Story of Paper." featuring the 

 manufacture of newsprint from the forests of 

 .Northern Ontario. 



