Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 25.5 



Their positive necessities unquestionably compel them to do what the 

 farmer considers a villainous outrage in the ploughed field, because they 

 pull up an incipient sprout of Indian corn in searching for a much 

 worse enemy nestling in the hill. They are unconscious of doing 

 wrong. It is the easiest mode suggested by their intelligence for 

 capturing a grub at the bottom. An empty stomach demands food, 

 and we in our wisdom, under precisely similar circumstances, solace 

 ourselves with the maxim that necessity knows no law. Farmers 

 interpose no objections to their feastings on carrion. It is acceptable 

 service when a dead horse, tainting a whole neighborhood, is taken 

 in charge by a band of crows, quickly changing Professor Huxley's 

 offensive protoplasm into living relations. Such nutriment is not 

 their choice, since to keep down the too great multiplication of those 

 annoyances regarded as baneful to the farmer's prosperity is their 

 special sphere of action. Therefore let crows alone. They are neither 

 thieves or robbers. A perpetual aggressive war against them and 

 many other equally useful birds is a disgrace to our vaunted civiliza- 

 tion. Strong legislative measures are required for their protection, or, 

 in the coming future, armies of devouring insects which crows before 

 they have wings or commenced propogating, and which other flying 

 vigilance committees arrest if they escape their searching detective 

 ability, will ruin crops and blight the expectations of cultivators of 

 the soil to an extent to be deplored as a national calamity. 



The Chairman — I hope Senator Geddes will let us hear his opinion, 

 and that it will be favorable to our sable friend. 



Hon. George Geddes — There is good in the crow. I agree with 

 almost all the statements contained in the paper, but I think the 

 doctor is in error in this, that crows pull the corn for the sake of the 

 grub. If you roll the seed in tar before planting they refuse to touch 

 it ; so it would appear, at least, that they know the taste of corn, and 

 when to let it alone. They go for the corn and not for grubs; and 

 'tis the truth I tell you, doctor. Nevertheless, I never shoot crows ; 

 I regard them as friends and not foes, as more help than harm. 

 Sometimes, however, I have brought myself to the point of using a 

 little strychnine in the vicinity of a nest. 



African Wheat for Southern Farms. 



P. A. Boudinier, Louisiana, Mo., stated that he was once a farmer 



in Africa, in the vicinity of Algiers, and that when there he became 



thoroughly convinced that for southern climates the hard wheat, also 



called native wheat and African wheat, is the most prolific, the most 



