264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



office. Some correspondents were j)ositive that large numbers 

 of birds had been killed by the spraying in their neighborhoods, 

 but most of them failed to produce any dead birds. Many 

 correspondents in Massachusetts and other States, tree war- 

 dens, nurserymen, orchardists and others who made a business 

 of spraying trees, and who claimed to have kept a careful 

 Avatch for dead' birds, reported that they had failed to find 

 any. People on whose estates spraying had been done wrote 

 that they had instructed their men to keeyi a close lookout 

 for dead birds, but that none had been found. Mr. F. H. 

 Carpenter of Seekonk wrote on July 24 that he had found 

 five dead birds after the spraying and had tested them for 

 arsenic. He asserted that he had found very slight traces 

 of the poison in a chipping sparrow, a black and white war- 

 bler and a red-eyed vireo, but no traces were found in the 

 others. Each bird sent to the State Ornithologist, and re- 

 ceived by him in good condition, was first examined exter- 

 nally to see if any evident cause of death appeared. If no 

 injury was noted the bird was carefully skinned and again 

 examined. If then no sign of external injury was found the 

 skinned bird was preserved in a weak solution of formalde- 

 hyde or alcohol and sent to a chemist for examination. The 

 first two birds were examined by Dr. B. F. Davenport, 

 and showed no traces of arsenic. Subsequent examinations 

 were made at the laboratory at Harvard University, for the 

 reason that Dr. Sanger, the director of the laboratory, has 

 recently perfected a new and very delicate method of analysis 

 which is well adapted to this work. Samples of the formalde- 

 hyde solution and of the paraffin paper in which the birds 

 were wrapped for transportation were first analyzed, to 

 eliminate any possibility of error. They were found to con- 

 tain no arsenic. Such of the birds as were received during 

 the absence of the State Ornithologist from the office, and 

 others in which decomposition had begun, were placed in the 

 formaldehyde undissected and unskinncd. This may have 

 had a tendency to vitiate the result of the analysis in these 

 cases, as there might have been an o]i]i(>i"tiniity fov the feath- 

 ers to accumidate arsenic while llic birds were feeding on 

 sprayed trees. 



