Civilization Increases Bird Life* 
BY S. POWERS, OF JACKSONVI LLE. 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
Farmers sometimes grow a little weary 
of the oft-repeated lament over the de¬ 
struction of the birds. There is no 
doubt that there has been a ruthless 
slaughter of plume birds, but some intel¬ 
ligent agriculturists who have given 
thought to the subject believe that man 
feeds more birds than he kills. 
Let us take the continent as it was in 
its primeval condition. In the “starving 
time” of Jamestown Captain John Smith 
found no birds that he could use for food 
for his perishing colonists except a few 
water-fowl and wild turkeys obtained 
from the Indians. In the history of my 
native state, Ohio, I have read the writ¬ 
ings of over fifty men describing pioneer 
life, and not one of them mentions any 
birds except wild turkeys and passenger 
pigeons. In Fremont’s narrative he 
mentions no birds until he gets beyond 
the forests and emerges upon the plains, 
when he speaks of “millions of water- 
fowl,” “flocks of screaming plover,” “a 
supper of sea-gulls,” etc. Arrived in 
California, he found “some pretty birds 
in the timber, and partridges, ducks and 
geese innumerable.” Again, “Flocks of 
blackbirds announced our approach to 
water” (the San Joaquin river). 
Every farmer has observed the lone¬ 
someness of a great forest—only a 
mournful chirp at long intervals from 
some solitary vireo or similar frequenter 
of the deep woods. Only birds with 
strong bills like the passenger pigeon can 
feed upon the oak and beech mast; 
hence these birds practically monopo¬ 
lized the mighty forests; while turkeys 
and water-fowls occupied the streams 
and grouse the prairies. There were 
very few of those smaller, more obscure, 
but more useful birds, of which untold 
millions now wait on the footsteps of 
man. The showy, spectacular birds— 
what may be called the stage properties 
of ‘‘the great sloven continent” as it 
stretched out waste and silent before the 
discoverers—have been extirpated; but 
the little friends of man, the insect de¬ 
stroyers, have been multiplied beyond 
computation. 
For instance, take the bird called in 
the South the rice-bird, and in the North 
the bobolink. In the early history of 
the Carolinas and Georgia, before rice 
culture was introduced, they were com¬ 
paratively scarce. Nowadays, on the 
rich feeding grounds of the rice fields, 
they have propagated like locusts. They 
become so fat on rice that when one falls 
a distance to the ground it bursts asun¬ 
der; if a match is touched to the body, 
it will burn. The rice-bird is not a friend 
of man in the South, but in the North it 
is; and in both sections it is uncommonly 
good eating. Man raises this bird al- 
