20 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
shape of hen’s eggs alone, exceeds annually that of all the 
mines of gold, silver, and other precious metals; but what- 
ever the actual statistics may be, the food and feather sources 
of revenue are certainly enormous, and few industries yield 
greater profit for the comparatively small capital required. 
No one denies or even questions man’s right to convert the 
animal world to his own uses; he may slay and eat, and in 
all ways command the life or death of creatures lower than 
himself in the scale of organization; he has always and will 
always do so, everywhere; his sovereignty in this regard is 
undisputed and indisputable. And thus it is that birds 
which of their own nature and volition are neutral or indif- 
ferent in the service of man, are forced into human relations 
of the most eminent practical utility, alike during their in- 
nocent lives and in their victimized deaths. 
Lest I appear as only a partisan of birds, or a special 
pleader in a case I may seem to have prejudged, let us hear 
the other side, and see what counter-arguments or even in- 
dictments can be brought to bear against the objects of our 
present solicitude. Let us keep upon the same plane of 
practical utility, measurable in money, and attempt some 
estimate of damage done by certain birds, confining atten- 
tion also to our own country, with which we are naturally 
most concerned. We have seen birds as our wholesale 
creditors ; can the account be balanced in any items with 
which they must be debited ? 
Several such items are readily scored against birds. In 
the first place, some birds which are neutral in direct account 
with man become his enemies by their destruction of other 
birds which are useful to him. A part of the birds of prey 
are thus hurtful, not so much by their raids on poultry as 
by their destruction of insectivorous birds. Such rapacious 
species, in this country, belong especially to the genera 
Falco and Accipiter, the members of which eat relatively few 
insects, and do not destroy very many small mammals or 
reptiles, but are active and effectual in their sanguinary 
