THE OOLOOIST 



143 



over 1,200 cinch bugs that it had 

 eaten that day. Another quail killed 

 in a wheat field in Kansas and exam- 

 ined by another government expert 

 had in its craw the remains of over 

 2,000 hessian flies that it had eaten 

 that day. 



The farmers of the northern states 

 are paying out $16,000,000 to $17,000,- 

 000 a year for paris green to put on 

 their potato vines, and if they do not 

 do it they could not raise a potato fit 

 to eat. 



A quail killed in a potato field in 

 Pennsylvania and examined by a 

 government entomologist had in its 

 stomach the remains of 127 potato 

 bugs. 



QuaMs Instead of Poison. 



If the quails were here in their nor- 

 mal numbers, as there were 30 or 40 

 years ago, there would be no need of 

 using a pound of paris green, any- 

 where in the country. 



Each of the great apple producing 

 states is paying out $1,000,000 to $3,- 

 000,000 a year for spraying its apple 

 trees and all because the robins, the 

 thrushes, the orioles, the tanagers 

 and other birds that eat the coddling 

 moth have been slaughtered to such 

 an extent there are not enough of 

 them left to take care of this bug, or 

 any of the others that attack the far- 

 mer's crops. 



The quail is one of the most valu- 

 able insect-eating birds o fits size in 

 the world, and yet there are so-called 

 sportsmen, all over the land, thous- 

 ands of them, who insist on having 

 legal authority to kill every quail 

 they can find, during at least three 

 months of the year. Then there is a 

 whole army of game hogs who go out 

 and kill them when they are half 

 grown, and when there is no game 

 warden in sight. 



Miss Margaret M. Nice, of the fac- 

 ulty of the Massachusetts state uni- 



versity, has studied the quail diligent- 

 ly in domestication for years past. 

 She has had it in that time, under 

 wire, over 300 of these birds. She has 

 kept each one separate from the 

 others. She has numbered each bird 

 and kept a book account of it. She 

 has counted out and weighed out its 

 food to it and has arrived at the con- 

 clusion that each adult quail in this 

 country eats each summer over 75,000 

 bugs and worms, and over 6,000,000 

 weed seeds each winter, seeds of nox- 

 ious weeds that the farmer has to 

 fight all winter. 



The experts in the biological sur- 

 vey have figured that each adult quail 

 is worth $25 a year to the farmer on 

 whose land it lives. If we could only 

 get the farmers to read the bulletin 

 that the bureau sends out, free, they 

 would know the value of this bird, 

 and not one of them would ever allow 

 another quail killed on his land. 



The prairie chicken is another vo- 

 racious bug eater, and consumes about 

 four times as many insects each day 

 as the quail does, because it is about 

 four times as large. A prairie chick- 

 en killed in a cotton field in Texas 

 and examined by one of these same 

 government employees had in its 

 stomach the remains of 356 cotton 

 boll weevils. Another killed on a farm 

 in Nebraska and examined by Pro- 

 fesssor Lawrence Bruner of the de- 

 partment of biology, in the state uni- 

 versity, had in its stomach the re- 

 mains of over 1,000 grass-hoppers, an 

 insect that is eating millions of dol- 

 lars worth of farm products every 

 year. 



People Paying the Freight 



I speak from personal knowledge 

 when I say that there were countless 

 millions of these birds in Illinois, 

 Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Kan- 

 sas 25 years ago; but now you may 

 hunt over a whole county in any of 



