462 
ECONOMIC RELATIONS OF OUR BIRDS. 
student will be led more and more into intimate personal contact witlr the forms 
of living, feeling and thinking nature to supplement and vivify, with his own 
perceptive faculties, the suggestions from teacher and text-book. Tiie amount 
of illustrative material needed in the shape of livdng forms must increase year 
by year as long as our educational methods are progressive; while, with the 
most careful husbanding of resources, the number of living species must 
diminish in given localities. The time has already come when the least bene¬ 
ficial animals should be saci-ificed for anatomical and physiological demonstra¬ 
tions, whenever they will answer tlie purpose, and the more beneficial forms, 
in other ways, spared. Here are grounds for a legitimate demand for the pres¬ 
ervation of animals to some extent detrimental, and every parent can well afford 
to contribute a not inconsiderable sum for their maintenance as educational 
material simply. 
There is another aspect of the educational phase of this question. The amount 
of information unconsciously imbibed by the inevitable contact with living 
forms is very large as regards both variety and value, and this must increase 
continually as long as there is progress, and the objects for personal contact re¬ 
main. Viewed in this light, the very viciousness of the Blue Jay and Shrike 
gives to them a kind of intrinsic educational value which is not small. 
A TEMPORARY CLASSIFICATION OF WISCONSIN BIRDS ON AN 
ECONOMIC BASIS. 
In view of the fact that so little careful study has been devoted to the food of 
American birds, and that the subject, considered in all its important bearings, 
is so difficult, intricate and important, it is deemed advisable, for present pur¬ 
poses, to arrange our birds under the groups following. In this classification, 
only Wisconsin interests will be especially considered, not because the interests 
of other states are regarded as unimportant, but because each state, so far as its 
industries are peculiar, must solve its own questions. 
Group I. 
Birds whose habits, so far as they are known, render them, on the whole, 
beneficial. 
Under this group are placed those birds whose ability to render service appears 
to exceed their known injurious tendencies. It may be divided into three 
classes: » 
(a) Birds whose known habits render them beneficial at all times. 
While it is probable that, after a careful and exhaustive study of the habits of 
our birds has been made, none of them will be found wholly beneficial, it is 
better to regard them innocent until they are proved guilty. 
(b) Birds which are known to be to some extent injurious, but whose knoivn 
services exceed their knoivn injuries. 
It is probable that all of our useful birds will ultimately fall into this class. 
(c) Birds whose fiesh is valuable for food, andivhose present abundance and 
slight usefulness as insect destroyers make it proper to permit their destruction 
as game. 
Birds of this class belong properly in one of the two preceding classes, but this 
classification is made for an obvious special purpose. 
