BIRDS AS FERTILIZERS. 



PROFESSOR BROWN, in his examina- 

 tion before the Agricultural Commis- 

 sion of Ontario (1881) on the profits of 

 raising beef cattle for market, stated that 

 the class of cattle he raised for market 

 realized $88 at twenty-nine months old, the 

 cost of food consumed at market prices 

 being $147. At thirty-six months the beasts 

 were worth $103, the costs being $184, 

 showing an apparent loss of $59 at the 

 lower, and of $81 at the greater age. The 

 Professor nevertheless maintained that the 

 value of the manure converted the apparent 

 loss into a real gain. The cattle realize 

 about sixty per cent, on costs of their food 

 and the manure is roughly estimated at an- 

 other sixty per cent., showing a net profit of 

 twenty per cent. 



But as a matter of fact, the manure is 

 worth more than the cost of the food con- 

 sumed in producing it. Locate two farm- 

 ers, on moderately fertile farms, alike in 

 condition. Let the one keep no stock and 

 let the other keep his farm well stocked 

 with cattle, which he allows to grow old and 

 die from. year to year without seeking any 

 direct return from them. In a few years 

 the first farmer's land will be exhausted and 

 cease to yield any remunerative returns for 

 his labor, while the second's will steadily in- 

 crease in value, the extra crop due to the 

 manure being always in excess of that con- 

 sumed in producing it. 



Every living creature — every plant — re- 

 turns more to the soil than it takes from it, 

 and when it is considered that birds are 

 making manure all the year round, that 

 their manure is richer than that of cattle, 

 that they require no care, that they dress 

 the land themselves, and tax the farmer for 

 less than ten per cent, of the food they con- 

 sume, there is no escape from the conclu- 

 sion that it is far more profitable to keep 

 birds than cattle. Every bird yields a profit 

 to the farmer; the one great trouble is that 



there are not enough ot them, the other 

 trouble is that the farmer's eyes are closed 

 to the facts. When it is a question of food 

 consumed in the ripening grain fields, the 

 birds are credited with enormous capacities 

 of consumption, but when it becomes a 

 question of the value of the manure re- 

 turned to the land, the farmers are inclined 

 to pooh-pooh the labors of the birds in this 

 direction as of no consequence, never con- 

 sidering that the measure of their voracity 

 at harvest time, when they engage the 

 farmer's attention, is also the measure of 

 their returns to the soil, and the true stan- 

 dard by which to measure the value of their 

 returns all the year round. It is profitable 

 to keep stock and feed it all the year round 

 for the sake of the manure ; how much 

 more so to keep birds which are fed by the 

 farmer only about one month in the year, 

 and which, during the remainder of the 

 year, or as much of it as they remain with 

 us, feed on the farmer's enemies, weed 

 seeds and insects, keeping both in check, 

 and rendering them in their turn beneficial 

 by converting their substance — all that they 

 have taken from the soil and atmosphere — 

 into organic food, which is easily assimilated 

 by future crops. 



Life on earth began with those low types 

 which were independent of pre-existent or- 

 ganized food; that is, with plants or ani- 

 mals or life types not easily assignable to 

 either kingdom, which were capable of 

 assimilating their substance directly from 

 the unorganized elements — carbon, oxygen, 

 and hydrogen, with or without nitrogen. 

 Man and the higher animals cannot draw 

 subsistence from air and water, they must 

 have food already organized, and it is only 

 by the constant succession of life and death 

 beginning with these lowest life types which 

 are capable of assimilating their food from 

 the elements direct, that the soil of the earth 

 is fitted for the support of higher life types, 



