forest and stream 
661 
The Bounty System Branded As a Failure 
We Mu,t Now Begin to Learn Thrift” Says This Authority, and With it the Conservation of all 
Natural Supplies and Resources 
E bounty system belongs to a 
phase of our legislation and 
policy that we had better for¬ 
get and leave behind us as 
quickly as possible. We must 
now begin to learn thrift and 
the conservation of all natural 
supplies and resources, the pre¬ 
servation of our forests and streams and their 
natural inhabitants, instead of bragging about 
how much we can destroy and exterminate and 
still manage to live. 
By Sydney G. Fisher. 
struggle for life, its preying on itself. “This 
daily and hourly struggle,” says Wallace in his 
book on Darwinism, “this incessant warfare is 
nevertheless the very means by which much of 
the beauty and harmony and enjoyment in nature 
is produced.” Even all the plants of a country 
* 
One species of vermin, the fox, a most inter- 
est.ing animal, capable, if given a chance, of 
living and surviving almost anywhere, has been 
denounced and hunted down in this country until 
he is largely exterminated, except in a very few 
localities. In England they have great numbers 
of them and instead of exterminating them with 
poison and the trap, hunt them with horse and 
hound and in a few places on foot. It is the 
national sport; improves the health and vigor 
of the race, makes life more enjoyable for all 
classes and real estate more valuable in every 
country. In England you hear constant com¬ 
plaint by game keepers and farmers of the de¬ 
predations of the fox. As a matter of fact, he 
lives mostly on mice, insects and such things 
and his indulgence in a meal of feathers is 
only occasional. But there is no doubt he does 
indulge at times and keepers and farmers bring 
it up against the fox hunter. But they do not 
rush to the legislature to enact a system that 
will exterminate the fox; nor do they exter¬ 
minate him in any other way. They are not 
such fools. They know how to balance things 
better. They have plenty of foxes and protect 
themselves from him or a particular individual 
of his race that goes wrong; and at the same 
time they have plenty of game and chickens; 
far more than we have. In other words, they 
know how to preserve the balance. That is the 
great point—the balance of nature, which 
was created by God long ago, and which is 
necessary for us if we would get the most from 
nature. The fatal defect in our system is dis¬ 
regarding that balance, trying to select certain 
animals or birds that we label beneficial and 
exterminating all the rest. It is a delusion be¬ 
cause all are beneficial and all are injurious. 
It is strange what a fit of the horrors some 
good refined people and nature lovers will have 
when they hear of one bird killing and eating 
another, although they themselves live on poultry 
beef and mutton every day. They will never 
understand nature and learn to restore and de¬ 
velop nature until they learn to appreciate its 
‘ s the sec °nd of a series of article* 
nJu ‘ n £- Ram . e conservation, and the various mcth- 
° d ,»’j hlch h?ve been attempted to foster it and he 
w h*ch have been incurred in the attempt 
lisheH thlrd tK rtl n e by i the same authority will be pub-’ 
lished ip the December Forest and Stream. P ° 
I Have Frequently Seen Hawks Sitting for 
Hours with Small Birds or Flocks of 
Black Birds All Around Them. 
are at war with each other. The animals, birds 
and insects besides being at war with each other 
are at war with the plants which they eat and 
destroy. And yet, in the long course of cen¬ 
turies what a perfect balance of most abundant 
richness, utility and beauty this warring process 
will produce and has produced as witness our 
own continent when first discovered by white men. 
1 here is scarcely a bird or animal now-a-days 
against which you cannot draw an indictment for 
evil so-called, and in the next breath deliver an 
eulogy on him. Even the robin, a much loved 
bird, that most people, at least in the north, are 
anxious to protect is in point of fact the worst 
kind of a murderer of angle worms and a terri¬ 
ble destroyer of some kinds of fruit, especially 
strawberries and cherries. The angle worms, 
which he is so skillful in drawing from the 
ground are very beneficial to agriculture. Almost 
any book on the science of soils and their fer¬ 
tility will tell you that our most productive soils 
have been largely created and kept productive 
by these worms working them over and over in 
the course of long years and passing the earth 
through their bodies. So we could easily work 
up an argument against Mr. Cock Robin as an 
enemy of agriculture and ask the legislature to 
put a bounty on his scalp. 
The Cape May Warbler, a very beautiful bird, 
a great devourer of insects and believed to have 
actually increased in numbers in certain local¬ 
ities. has recently been caught picking holes in 
grapes which are then stung by bees and injured 
for the market. How terrible! Let us exter¬ 
minate him ! And also exterminate the bees. 
The cat bird, beautiful, full of character and 
interest, and in its mimicking power, almost equal 
to the mocking bird, is another wicked destroyer 
of fruit. Why not a bounty for it? I know a 
household that has a number of fine cherry 
trees. Two of them that stand apart; they have 
set aside for the cat birds, and robins. In the 
rest they put scare crows to keep the cat birds 
and robins away and amuse themselves watch¬ 
ing the disappointed birds scolding at the scare 
crows. Their method is in illustration of the 
true theory that if we want to enjoy nature to 
the full and get all the benefit from it. we should 
be willing to share it with the birds and animals. 
Let them have their percentage of the crops and 
poultry. It is a very small percentage that they 
ask in return for immense benefit. 
A prize fighter, a very rugged man, whom I 
once met and hunted with in the south, sur¬ 
prised me by his intense admiration for the 
beauty of nature. He explained to me in vigor¬ 
ous language that it was our duty because of 
our superior intelligence to take care of all the 
birds in the world; that God had put us here 
for that purpose. Good ideas often come to us 
from very unexpected sources; and this thought 
of the prize fighter fits into a striking passage 
in one of the books of the famous geologist,, 
Shaler. Commenting on the probability and al¬ 
most certainty that none of the planets or worlds 
that astronomy has explored, have an atmos¬ 
phere that would support the animal life that 
we know, he called attention to the extremely 
frail and slight support that animal life has on 
