VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 23 



CHAPTER L 



THE VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 



Birds are classed as useful or injurious only as they affect 

 man or his property. In an uninhabited country birds can- 

 not be ranked as beneficial or harmful, good or bad, for there 

 is no agriculture. There the earth, untroubled by man, brings 

 forth vegetation, and animals after their kind. Nature's laws, 

 working in harmony, need none of man's assistance. The 

 condition of the earth before man appeared is typified in the 

 Biblical account of the garden of Eden. 



PRIMITIVE MAN'S RELATIONS TO NATURE. 



We have seen that under such natural conditions all birds 

 are essential to the general Avelfare, each filling well its 

 appointed place. But trouble and discord come to Eden. 

 Man appears, and becomes the dominant power on the earth. 

 He sets up artificial standards of his own, and bids nature 

 conform to them. He is constantly at war with nature. He 

 classes wild creatures as injurious, provided they either in- 

 jure his person, or cause him loss by destroying or harming 

 any of his property or any of the wild animals or plants 

 which he regards as useful. He considers all wild creatures 

 beneficial that contribute directly or indirectly to his own 

 welfare, or to the increase in value of his property. 



He is often in error, even from his own standpoint, in 

 thus classifying animals, owing to an insufficient knowledge 

 of their food habits ; but the principle holds good, and stand- 

 ards change with the acquisition of knowledge. 



Man in a savage state lived, like other animals, in harmony 

 with nature. At first he practised no agriculture and domes- 

 ticated no animals. He made war mainly upon his fellows 

 and the larger beasts of prey, killing them in self-defence 

 or for food. (It seems probable that primitive man was 

 a cannibal.) Otherwise, he fed altogether upon the wild 



