VALUE OF BIRDS TO MAN. 23 
CHAPTER I. 
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 welfare, 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 ina 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 prebable that primitive man was 
a cannibal.) Otherwise, he fed altogether upon the wild 
