EDITORIAL 
THE BALANCE OF TT' ACTS set down boldly have an 
/IN I MATE NATURE i inexplicable attraction — even 
disjointed facts. Bnt when one can 
pick ont two fact items, place them side bv side, the reader is 
often astonished to find not only a singular relationship, but each 
appears the more important for that relationship. Thus, it is an 
astonishing fact that the annual loss to plant industries of the 
nation and to forests through pests ranges between ten and twenty 
per cent, is valued at $500,000,000, and causes an annual expendi¬ 
ture of between $7,000,000 and $8,000,000 for spraying machines, 
spraying solutions and labor. 
It is also an astonishing fact that between 1840 and 1910 eleven 
species of valuable wild life were totally exterminated in the 
United States; that twenty-five others are candidates for oblivion, 
and that in one State alone — Ohio, which was once abundantly 
stocked with a great variety and a great number of game birds and 
mammals — fourteen species have become extinct, and eight spe¬ 
cies of valuable birds are reported to be threatened with extinc¬ 
tion, one of them being the quail, the most valuable bird in¬ 
fluencing the fortune of farmers and fruit-growers of North 
America. 
Between these two bare lines of statistics there may seem to be 
no relation until one considers the services of the quail. For the 
facts, turn to a volume by William T. Hornaday, "Wild Life 
Conservation in Theory and Practice” — a book that should be in 
every sportsman’s hand. 
“It is fairly beyond question that of all the birds that influence 
the fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, 
the common quail is the most valuable! 
"It remains on the farm throughout the year. When insects 
are most numerous, bob-white devotes to them his entire time. 
He destroys them during sixteen to eighteen hours of the summer 
day. When the insects are gone he turns his attention to the 
weeds that are striving to seed down the farmer’s fields for an¬ 
other year. He consumes, as palatable food, the seeds of 129 
species of weeds; and the quantity that one bird can consume in 
one day is almost beyond belief. The thousand seeds for one 
bird's daily ration is a small quantity and far below the average 
of what a healthy adult biyd requires. To kill weeds on the 
farm costs money—hard cash that the farmer has earned bv toil 
or labor of cash value which he himself bestows. Does the 
average farmer ever put forth any: strenuous efforts to protect 
from poachers and other enemies the quail that work so well and 
so faithfully for him? The exceptional farmer does; the average 
farmer does not. 
"All that the average farmer thinks of the quail, even those 
in his own coveys, is as so much meat for his table. 
“A list of the 129 species of weeds whose seeds are eaten by 
the bob-white looks like a botanical rogues’ gallery. Conspicuous 
in' it are such old enemies as the pigweed, smartweed, beggar- 
tick, foxtail, burdock, barnyard grass, crab grass, ragweed and 
plantain. It has been calculated that if in Virginia and North 
Carolina there were four bob-whites to every square mile, and 
each bird ate one ounce of weed seeds per day from September t 
to April 30 the total amount consumed in those two States would 
be 1.341 tons. 
“As a destroyer of insects it would seem that the common 
quail deserves the first place. We know of no other species 
whose appetite covers so wide a variety of insect food. It is 
known that this bird consumes 145 different species of insects. 
and the list includes all the notorious insect pests of the farm and 
orchard save the few that live and work high up beyond the reach 
of a bird that lives on the ground. However, the quail's reper¬ 
toire includes the codling-moth, the garden caterpillars, flies, mos¬ 
quitoes, plant-lice, cotton-boll weevil and a host of others." 
All of which brings us around to the original figures given at 
the head of this editorial—that from ten to twenty per cent loss 
is caused to crops every year, loss that was unknown forty years 
ago, loss that man must suffer because we have prevented, 
through our wilful destruction of wild life, the maintenance of 
the balance of animate nature. 
This balance is all a part of Nature's scheme for having a place 
for everything and everything in its place. When the balance 
is broken someone must pay. In this instance man pays, pays 
heavilv. And so, on our pages of House and Garden you find 
a strange contrast — articles that give directions for spraying and 
articles that give directions for preserving bird life. In the 
former we are valiantly trying to supply a defect that the loss of 
the latter incurs, striving to keep up a balance that Nature, were 
she permitted, would gladly do. Nor is it any vicious circle, 
this balance, for were American sportsmen to appreciate the 
situation in all its gravity they would soon find a solution. They 
would soon learn that to every wild bird ruthlessly killed some 
farm somewhere must suffer. 
Onlv the stern restrictions of the law seem to curb the sav¬ 
agery of some sportsmen. But others, fortunately, are amenable 
to reason. A great fault lies in the fact that the reason has not been 
brought to their attention with sufficient force. Start with the 
reform leaders in embryo — start with college men. What do 
thev know of the necessity for preserving wild life? Were the 
facts presented to them, doubtless the next five years would see- 
sincere effort being made by these men to provide for proper 
legislation and a curbing of individual savagery. 
And. as in any other reform, the problem, of the preservation 
of wild life must start with the individual. The type of sports¬ 
man who can boast enormous bags is growing scarcer every day. 
We do not admire him any more than we would nowadays marvel 
at the prowess of an Indian boasting of the scalps hung from his 
belt. The game hog is a distinctly distasteful person. He rep¬ 
resents the regrettable past. He is, moreover, a living contra¬ 
diction to the banal platitude that the selfish man ultimately harms 
only himself. Having no respect for the rights of wild life to 
their life, it cannot be expected of him to show regard for the 
farmer's right to the protection wild life affords. 
Bv this we do not mean to imply that there is not a legitimate 
use of game or that all wild life should be given a coddled ex¬ 
istence. The relief from work and worry that a gunning trip 
affords is undisputed. Nor can any of us deny that a taste of 
game is a great relief from a steady diet of beef and mutton. 
But to the doors of such conservative folk cannot be laid the 
blame, for the slaughter of our wild fowl is necessitated by the 
demands of those jaded epicureans to whom even good beef and 
mutton are revolting. Killing for food necessity exists only in 
the farthest outlying districts, and yet, as Hornaday observes, 
fully ninety-five per cent of the men and boys who kill American- 
game regard game birds and mammals only as things to be killed 
and eaten to satisfy hunger — the viewpoint of the caveman and 
the savage. None of them knows what real hunger is, save by 
hearsay. 
