Agriculture and Its Needs 19 



are proud of it. We are protecting our 

 wild animals. One has to pay for it, and be 

 disgraced everlastingly, if he has a wild hen 

 in his larder at any time in eleven months 

 of the year, if it can be proved that the hen, 

 when in life, was wild. Just now they are 

 trying to mulct a man in penalties and 

 punish him for killing deer that were tame 

 and that he bred and raised in his own pad- 

 dock. Last winter the Legislature made it 

 a misdemeanor for a farmer's boy to 

 shoot weasels and woodchucks beyond the 

 narrow limit of his father's farm, at any 

 time of the year, without paying a dollar 

 for a license to try it. We will not worry 

 about that : it will eventuate all right. But 

 insect pests destroy more value in farm 

 products every year than fires destroy in 

 value of forest products in a generation. 

 Our Science Division conservatively esti- 

 mates that the annual insect destruction to 



