12 
by the wayside 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Published on the tenth of each month except July and 
August. 
The official organ of the Wisconsin and Illinois Audu¬ 
bon Societies. __ 
Twenty-five cents per year. Single Copies 5 cents 
All communications should be sent to Thos. R. Moyle, 
Appleton, Wis. 
An Enemy to the Sparrow. 
Americans have been invited to import 
other English birds which will destroy 
the sparrow. The sparrow has no fiercer 
enemy than the English robin and chaf¬ 
finch. The robin is an in sect-eating 
bird and would grow fat on American 
mosquitos. Moreover, he so hates the 
sparrow that he wages war with him 
on all occasions. The chaffinch likewise 
detests the sparrow and fights him to 
death whenever opportunity occurs. 
Both birds love the society of humanity 
and breed freely in cities where they can 
obtain some little arboresence. 
To Protect British Birds. 
Lord Avebury has just asked the British 
parliament to pass a bill based on a law 
which at present obtains in the State of 
New York and which provides that no 
wild birds or birds for which there is no 
open season can be taken or possessed at 
any time, dead or alive, except under the 
authority of certificates, and no part of 
the plumage, skin or body of any pro¬ 
tected bird can be sold or held in pos¬ 
session for sale. 
Lord Avebury said it was greatly to 
be desired that the British parliament 
should follow the example of the New 
York legislature before it is too late. 
The Linnean Society, Selbourne Society 
and the Society for the Protection of 
Birds can produce evidence of the expor¬ 
tation of large numbers of precious birds. 
Work the Birds Do. 
Continued from page 11. 
skulls and large bones of mice or rats— 
in other words of destructive rodents. 
The man who kills a hawk or owl unless 
it be one of the three or four harmful 
species, performs an ill service for the 
community where he kills it. 
The woodpeckers spend all their time 
winter and summer, searching for grubs 
which bore into trees, and for the eggs of 
noxious insects which lie hidden in the 
crevices of the bark and the cracks in the 
dry wood; and every insect, grub or 
batch of eggs they devour is just so much 
help to the owner of the wood lot by re¬ 
ducing the number of his enemies. 
It was in 1868 that the German society 
of Farmers and Foresters became alarm¬ 
ed at the constantly increasing depreda¬ 
tions of insects, which was due to the 
great destruction of birds, and began to 
urge that an International agreement 
should be had for the protection of birds 
useful to agriculture and forestry. They 
worked on this subject for nearly thirty 
years, and at last in 1895 a meeting was 
called in Paris and attended by delegates 
from all the countries of Europe. It 
was unanimously agreed that beneficial 
species should be protected, but there 
was absolutely no agreement concerning 
the usefullness and noxiousness of the 
various species. The delegates did not 
know what the birds ate, and so they did 
not know whether the birds were useful 
or harmful. To find out about this for 
America is a part of the work now being 
done by the United States Biological 
Survey .—Forest and Stream. 
As you hoe in your garden this sum¬ 
mer let it remind vou that the winter 
* 
birds that you encouraged to stay around 
your home have made your work much 
lighter by eating weed seed. 
