Useful and Harmless Animals 
Many useful and practically harmless animals are de- 
stroyed because they commit some damage to crops or 
vegetables at certain periods of the year, without any thought 
being taken as to their value during the balance of the year. 
Others are destroyed because men find pleasure in hunting 
and killing. To read the pamphlets issued by Mr. Wm. T. 
Hornaday, of the New York zoological park, entitled “The 
Destruction of Our Birds and Mammals,” is sufficient to 
make one ashamed of our country and civilization when con- 
sidered by our relations to the lower animals. 
For years the books for children on animal studies had 
most to say about lions, elephants, tigers and other animals 
of a ferocious type. To-day we are beginning to learn 
something of squirrels, raccoons, muskrats, foxes, chipmunks, 
frogs, snakes, moles and other common forms, including 
butterflies, bees, ants, w'asps, gall flies and other insects. The 
fact that some of these forms of life prey upon others has 
furnished a reason for most men destroying any of them 
they may choose to select. This is not the reasoning of 
better minds, and it is to be hoped that the day is dawning 
when men will be above such reasoning. 
Most of the books written in the past in regard to ani- 
mals, especially those of a popular nature, have been written 
for the hunter, the greater portion being taken up with 
instructions on the best methods of trapping or hunting 
the various animals ; how to prepare them for the pot, to 
skin or stuff them. Recently there has been an increase of 
the humane book, books of study of the characteristics of the 
wild animals in caring for their young, and the reasons why 
such animals should not be totally destroyed. However, 
the protection of wild animals has been mostly left to the 
sportsmen, who, becoming alarmed lest they may have 
nothing of a live nature to shoot, put a moderating check 
on themselves and their companions. The humane societies 
have given their attention mainly to children and the domes- 
