180 



noted ahovo, are favorite feeding grounds for birds of 

 piey wliicli subsist on meadow-mice. 



MICE Dl<:S'riiOVK]) T1IJ-: (JKAPE vinjos. 



The experience of a farmer, Mr, Worth, who rt; 

 sided along the Brandywine a few miles above the 

 place last referred to, shows the utter folly of destroj'- 

 ing the mice-eating hawks and owls. 



Many birds and mammals are, at times, destroyed 

 with the consent of the farmer, who evidently does 

 not realize that they come to his premises to prey upon 

 insidious foes which attack his crops. In this con- 

 nection it will not, perhaps, be out of jjlace to i;ive the 

 experience of Ebenezer Worth, a farmer who resided 

 in Chester county, Pennsylvania, along the TJrandy- 

 wine creek, a few miles from West Chester, where he 

 owned a large vineyard. 



The fields and meadow lands about his grape vines 

 were frequented in the winter season by hawks and 

 owls of different kinds. During the winter of 188(5 

 and 1887 over a hundred of these birds were killed 

 within a radius of two miles of his farm, and the fol- 

 lowing winter a hawk or owl was seldom seen about 

 his premises. Field or meadow mice became abund- 

 ant in that vicinity and before the winter was over 

 several hundred grape vines were destroyed by these 

 little rodents. Mr. Worth was convinced that the^ 

 birds of prey had kept in check, during former years, 

 the mice, and had the hawks and owls that had so 

 faithfully guarded his possessions, both by day and 

 night, been left unmolested his vineyard would not, in 

 his opinion, have been almost ruined. 



For generations the game-keepers of Great Britain 

 have persistently destroyed the biids o^f prey, and as a 



