76 USEFUL BIRDS. 



Professor Aughey gathered statistics regarding the killing 

 of Quail and Prairie Chickens for the market during this 

 period, and concluded that in thirty counties the average 

 yearly slaughter of these birds must have been at least five 

 thousand Quail and ten thousand Prairie Chickens for each 

 county, or four hundred and fifty thousand birds in all. AVe 

 can only conjecture as to how great was the destruction of 

 other game birds. 



The poisoning of birds in the west permitted an increase 

 of many other insects besides the locusts. A farmer from 

 Wisconsin informed me that, the Blackbirds in his vicinity 

 having been killed off, the white grubs increased in number 

 and destroyed the grass roots, so that he lost four hundred 

 dollars in one year from this cause. 



THE DESTRUCTION OF INJURIOUS MAMMALS BY BIRDS. 

 The injury to trees and crops by insects is not the only 

 evil that has followed the destruction of birds and other 

 animals by man. Eapacious birds hold a chief place among 

 the forces which are appointed to hold in check the gnawing 

 mammals or rodents, which breed rapidly, and, unless kept 

 within bounds, are very destructive to grass fields, crops, and 

 trees. The great swarms of lemmings which have appeared 

 from time to time upon the Scandinavian peninsula are his- 

 torical. Their migrations, during which they destroy the 

 grass or grain in their path, until finally they reach the sea 

 and perish in a vain attempt to cross it, have been recorded 

 often. A similar increase of rodents may take place any- 

 where whenever their natural enemies are unduly reduced in 

 numbers. Such cases are on record in England and Scot- 

 land. In Stowe's Chronicle, in 1581, it is stated : — 



About Ilaliontide last past (1580) in the marshes of Danessey Hun- 

 dred, in a place called South Minster, in the county of Essex, there 

 sodainlie appeared an infinite number of mice, which overwhelming the 

 whole earth in the said marshes, did sheare and gnaw the grass by the 

 rootes, spoyling and tainting the same with their venimous teeth in such 

 sort, that the cattell which grazed thereon were smitten with a murraine 

 and died thereof ; which vermine by policie of man could not be de- 

 stx-oyed, till at the last it can^e to pass that there flocked together such 



