4 BIRDS 



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 every- 

 thing in feathers is a legitimate target. Thus it is that 



"The evil that birds do lives after them; 

 The good is oft iaterred with their bones." 



For two centuries and a haJf this systematic destruction 

 of birds, which blundered ignorantly along in every 

 colony, state, and territory, resulted in a loss to our agri- 

 culture whose colossal aggregate would "stagger human- 

 ity" if, indeed, our minds could grasp the estimated 

 figures in dollars and cents. Men now living among us 

 were absolutely the first to study the food of any one 

 species of bird through an entire year and in various sec- 

 tions of the country, and to pass scientific judgment upon 

 it only after laboratory tests of the contents of its stomach 

 — ^that final court of appeal. Through pressureHbrought 

 to bear upon Congress by the American Ornithologists' 

 Union, the Department of Agriculture was authorized in 

 1885 to spend a ridiculously small sum to learn the posi- 

 tive economic value of birds to us, a branch of scientific 

 research now included under the Division of Biological 

 Survey, Until that year aU the scientific work that was 

 done in this line could have been recorded in a very small 

 volume indeed. 



A General Whitewashing 



As might have been expected, when the white search- 

 light of science beats upon the birds, none, not even the 

 erow, appears as black as he has been painted. Only a 



