84 Bird Day Book 



ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS. 



♦*&♦ 



THE State owes a civic duty to the people to preserve all the 

 natural resources, whether they be in forests, in mines, in 

 water-ways, in birds, in game or in fish. The early idea predomi- 

 nated that any restriction imposed upon the right to make assaults 

 upon Nature's storehouse was a curtailment and an abridgment 

 of human liberty, and therefore hostile to the principles of free 

 government. However, the minds of the American people have 

 become thoroughly awakened to the imperative necessity of the 

 conservation of our natural assets, and the hand of the reckless, the 

 wanton and the vandal is sought to be held in check from making 

 relentless assaults upon the treasures of Nature's storehouse. 



The teachers of Alabama can be of invaluable aid to the next 

 generations by imbuing the minds of the children they teach with 

 the idea that birds should not be killed, not only because of their 

 brilliance, so pleasing to the observer, and their sweet music, redol- 

 ent with liquid melody, but because of their civic value of inesti- 

 mable intrinsic worth. 



The great question of the cause of plant maladies, the problem 

 of weed control and the aggression of insect life grows harrassing 

 to the farmers. The reason for this is simple. Many of our most 

 beneficial birds, among them doves, robins, cardinals, quail, field- 

 larks and bullbats, have been so ruthlessly destroyed that in less 

 than a generation their numbers have deceased eighty per cent. 



Without birds our beautiful State would not only become un- 

 productive but absolutely uninhabitable. A noted French scientist 

 has declared that without birds to check the ravages of insects, 

 human life would vanish from the planet in the space of nine 

 years. The insects would first fall upon the crops, then upon the 

 pastures and the foliage of the forests. This would leave to man 

 no cereals, stock nor cattle, for these would perish for the want 

 of food, then man, in direness of his great extremity, would be 

 driven to becoming a cannibal, or else forced to subsist exclusively 

 upon a diet of fish. 



Teach the children to love the birds, not only because of the 

 inspiring strains of their beautiful music that pervades the wood- 

 lands and thrills the soul with lofty ideals and exalted aspirations, 

 but for the reason that each bird is a toiler for the people, from 

 day to day, without remuneration; and without the birds to check 

 the assaults of insects upon the vegetable kingdom, Fair Alabama 

 would soon be precipitated from peace, happiness and prosperity 

 into the throes of woe, desolation and despair. 



