2 
Agriculture of Pennsylvania. 
[No. 2, 
enemies. It is not, therefore, strange that the farmer has not known 
what birds were good and what birds were bad. To learn this he 
would have to make a study of the insects and of all kinds of seeds; 
he would have to trap or shoot birds, and having secured his speci- 
mens he would have to be an anatomist in order to profit by their 
possession. In fact, he would have to be too much for any one man. 
The farmer realizes that it is to his advantage to accept the assistance 
of the entomologist, the botanist and the ornithologist. It is only 
recently that our government has recognized the necessity of paying 
experts for investigation in the proper direction, in order to protect 
our staple crops from their enemies. Only recently have even orni- 
thologists known how to find out what a bird eats and his consequent 
relation to agriculture. Only now do we realize that birds are 
enormous feeders and that in the aggregate they are capable of im- 
mense good or immense harm. Only since the indiscriminate destruc- 
tion of our native birds and the introduction of a foreign pest that 
threatens sad havoc everywhere, do the people call for help from the 
State and from the National Government. It is only now that our 
State has published a report of our birds. A word about this 
admirable report of Dr. W arren, the ornithologist of your Board. Turn 
to a description of whatever bird, and you will find that which interests 
you most, a description that enables you to identify it with the story 
of its food habits, so far as known. I consider this report the best 
yet published anywhere as an aid to a correct knowledge of the rela- 
tion of birds to agriculture. Keep it where you can refer to it; notice 
the birds and their habits; learn their names, their differences in color, 
size and flight; encourage the good ones; make war upon the bad 
ones, and you will be the gainer in knowledge and in profit. 
1 have been thus digressive in order to show how necessary it is to 
have a knowledge of birds before we can make or enforce good laws 
pertaining to them. We have seen our songsters, who were constantly 
protecting our crops, ruthlessly slaughtered to gratify a fashion; we 
have been offering bounties on the scalps of birds who were doing 
more good than harm, and have increased the vermin in our fields and 
gardens in a relative proportion. AVe have watched the rapid in- 
crease of an unfortunate importation to our cities and towns until 
paved streets no longer confine it, and the grain fields of our whole 
land are threatened with destruction by our once petted little English 
sparrow. We are in fact threatened with tv )0 dangers, viz : destruc- 
tion of our beneficent song and insectivorous birds and the destruction 
of our grain crops by countless thousands of grain-eating birds. The 
cry came years ago for aid in checking the disturbance. At first much 
sentiment was mixed up with the idea of the regulation of the bird 
question. Our organization, the American Ornithologists’ Union, 
composed of the prominent students of birds, appointed a committee 
for the protection of birds, another for the investigation of the Eng- 
lish sparrow; the National Government added a division of economic 
ornithology and mammalogy to the Department of Agriculture. The 
task of intelligently regulating the bird question is not an easy one, 
and the trouble has gotten such a start that it will take the combined 
efforts of a united people, with the hearty cooperation of all the 
States, to reform and correct the evil. All the committees and de- 
partments sent out circulars asking for facts and figures; societies re- 
sponded ; the press everywhere gave valuable assistance. Governors 
and legislators of many States became interested and put themselves 
