What Birds Do for Us 



the world, not a revival. One might have thought 

 that so intensely practical a people as the Americans 

 would have taken up economic ornithology first of 

 all, have learned with scientific certainty which birds 

 are too destructive for survival and which so valua- 

 ble that every measure ought to be taken to preserve 

 and increase them. In reality this has been the last 

 aspect of the subject to receive attention. First 

 came the classifiers Wilson, Audubon, Baird, and 

 Nuttall the pioneers in systematic bird study. 

 Thoreau was as a voice crying in the wilderness. 

 His books lay in piles on the attic floor, unsold many 

 years after his death. It remained for John Bur- 

 roughs to awaken the popular enthusiasm for out-of- 

 door life generally and for birds particularly, which 

 is one of the signs of our times. 



Among the first acts passed in the Colonies were 

 bounty laws, not only offering rewards for the heads 

 of certain birds that were condemned without fair 

 trial, but imposing fixed fines upon the farmer who 

 did not kill his quota each year. Of course every 

 man and boy carried a gun. The bounty system did 

 much to foster the popular notion that everything in 

 feathers is a legitimate target. Thus it is that 



"The evil that birds do lives after them ; 

 The good is oft interred with their bones." 



For two centuries and a half this systematic de- 

 struction of birds, which blundered ignorantly along 

 in every colony, state and territory, resulted in a loss 

 to our agriculture whose colossal aggregate would 

 "stagger humanity" if, indeed, our minds could grasp 

 the estimated figures in dollars and cents. Men now 



169 



