BY THE WAYSIDE 
10 
on vonr prev. Perch on some hand} r 
v- 1 * 
limb over the water and, when you see 
indications of fish, fly out over the water. 
Hover there a moment tili you are sure 
of your fish and then go for it. Don’t 
mind if you do get wet. One can t be 
successful and too careful of one’s clothes 
at the same time. Don’t let the size of 
the fish daunt you. The bigger the bet¬ 
ter and if you can’t carry it away you can 
leave it.” 
What fine clothes he wears for a fish¬ 
erman! Not at all our idea of "'fishing 
togs.” 
And his home? In a mud bank at 
the end of a burrow sometimes six feet 
long. A queer place for so brightly col¬ 
ored a bird, but very safe. 
Work the Birds Do. 
Just at present we hear frequently of 
the great sums of money being spent in 
San Francisco to exterminate the house 
rat, while from the other side of the 
world, western Europe, there rise loud 
lamentations concerning the destruction 
caused by rodents to British crops and 
merchandise. We know that all over 
this country rats, mice and other small 
gnawing animals of various sorts are 
causing in city and country damage 
which is beyond calculation. Individu¬ 
ally trifling, the sum total of this des¬ 
truction amounts to a vast sum. It is 
said that in one county of the State of 
Washington a species of ground squirrel 
destroys a half million dollars’ worth of 
wheat annually. If the destruction 
wrought by these various rodents could 
be stopped the country would be richer 
each year by hundreds of millions of 
dollars. 
Traps, poisons, noxious gases and con¬ 
tagious diseases as yet seem powerless, not 
only to exterminate these rodents, but 
even to keep their number down. Last 
autumn there was printed an account of a 
plague of field mice in the Humboldt 
Valley which swept off its agricultural 
products almost as in times past the 
Rockv Mountain locusts have swept the 
valley of the Platte. 
It is generally understood by thought¬ 
ful people that our forests are decreasing 
at such a rate as to threaten a lumber 
