Jan. . 1 , 1910 .] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
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here, but while a large part of its living con¬ 
sists of insects the record of 320 stomachs, show¬ 
ing fifty-four containing birds, or an average of 
17 per cent., would seem to indicate that it did 
more harm than good, as these birds, if left 
alive, would certainly do more good than the 
320 hawks who ate them. 
In considering the data furnished by the 
stomachs of these 2,700 hawks and owls we may 
take into consideration not only the actual num¬ 
bers of the prey, but the food of that prey. 
What good has a hawk or an owl done by eat- 
, ing snakes, frogs or toads? The miscellaneous 
food of these birds seems generally to have 
been batrachians, crawfish, lizards, snails, beetles 
(mainly dung beetles), grasshoppers, crickets 
and dragon flies and similar small truck, of which 
the toads and dragon flies must certainly be 
called beneficial. Of the bulk and remainder of 
their food, which consists wholly of birds and 
mammals, the majority would eat more or less— 
probably as much—as the hawks and owls 
themselves of this same miscellaneous diet, 
which therefore ought to have been estimated 
and deducted from the owls’ and hawks’ bill 
of fare before ranking them. For example, the 
barred owl and screech owl are both in class B, 
birds chiefly beneficial. Yet of the bird fare of 
the barred owls examined seven of the thirteen 
stomachs containing birds, or fifty-four per cent., 
contained screech owls, a beneficial owl. By 
their own tables the screech owls (including all 
empty stomachs, which were one-sixth of the 
number examined) ate 40 per cent, of small 
mammals, mainly noxious, against seventeen per 
cent, of birds. In casting up the year’s account 
for the barred owls, ought not this to be reck¬ 
oned off from the barred owl’s usefulness? 
And, in the end, it is the year’s account of the 
species that must be considered. The records 
of the commission, however minute, concern only 
one day’s food of the 2,700 birds examined. The 
question to the farmer considering the economic 
value of the bird is how much poultry they will 
take in a year; whether the number of mice and 
rats and other vermin will offset it in a year; 
and even more important, whether the rats and 
mice might not be kept down by weasels, foxes 
and other natural enemies of theirs, even if 
there were no owls, while the insectivorous 
birds, which the owl also preys upon largely and 
which are of the greatest benefit to the agricul¬ 
turist, need the protection from the owls. Take 
the little sparrow hawk for example, which is 
too small to be any particular menace to either 
game or poultry and admittedly eats very largely 
of insects. Yet 16 per cent, of the 320 stomachs 
contained small birds. At this rate in a year’s 
time the 320 tiny hawks would have consumed 
19,710 small birds. Even the house cat and the 
small boy with a gun hardly come up to this 
record as bird destroyers. The record of the more 
powerful hawks and owls is something startling. 
The outcome of the whole matter is that it 
is a complicated thing to estimate the good and 
evil done by any creature, but with the excep¬ 
tion of the sawwhet owl and the fishhawk I 
have yet to see a bird of either sort which did 
not appear to me to be doing vastly more hurt 
than good. Manly Hardy. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
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supply you regularly. 
The Hudson Watershed. 
Little Falls, N. Y., Dec. 26.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Corinth, N. Y., is in the northern 
part of Saratoga county, next to the Warren 
county line. Corinth has about 2,500 inhabi¬ 
tants and the chief occupations are making paper 
and shirts. A very large proportion of the in¬ 
habitants are loggers or woodsmen and there 
are many hunters and trappers in the region. 
Corinth and its sister village of Palmer and all 
the other places along the Hudson are scream¬ 
ing because the river has been so low. Last 
year was not so bad as this, the rule o’ thumb 
judges claim, for wells dried up this year which 
did not dry up last year. The fires last year 
are explained by the fact that there were no 
showers, while this year occasional showers did 
moisten the woods and save them from fire. 
Whether rainfall was less this year than last 
does not appear. 
But the river is low, and that fact meant 
throwing more than 200 men out of employ¬ 
ment in Corinth, owing to inability to run the 
paper mill at full speed. This meant a reduc¬ 
tion in the pay roll of about $2,500 a week, and 
this sum is marked to the loss of local mer¬ 
chants chiefly. All summer long this condition 
prevailed and the poor man’s pocket has been 
hit pretty hard. In twenty weeks a direct loss 
of $50,000 is thus seen. The indirect losses are 
great, too, for electric companies have been un¬ 
able to supply power contracted for, or look to 
expansion. There is much worry, suffering, per¬ 
haps, and various other evils. 
All this is directly traceable to the fact that 
the lands at the headwaters of the Hudson 
River were skinned of their forests, and no new 
crop of forest planted. Had the hundreds of 
thousands of acres of wilderness been culled in¬ 
stead of skinned, and had the mill and factory 
owners, now the power owners, carefully con¬ 
served their great land holdings, there would 
have been no such low water as at present. 
There would have been plenty of work. Power 
to spare for industries would have been saved. 
The problem of shrinking streams would have 
been forever solved. 
Sight of the Hudson River watershed is es¬ 
pecially arousing, for here was country very 
plainly unfit for ordinary farming. Scuffling up 
the wood humus revealed sand and stone. The 
future of that great tract of land was for forest 
and timber growing. When the work began 
the forest seemed inexhaustible. For years the 
cut did not equal the increase, but the line was 
passed at last, and from that time the forest was 
doomed. The timber floated down the Hudson 
and out into the railways, particularly at Glens 
Falls. The men in the thick of the work did 
not realize what they were doing till suddenly 
within a few years they came to the brim of 
the watershed and to the equally barren water¬ 
sheds of other streams. The wilderness was 
swept and there were mills using 300 cords of 
pulp wood a day to be fed. Of course, Canada 
had to be visited then, and it is expensive visit¬ 
ing. 
When the wilderness was skinned, the water 
dried out, and now the abundant rainfall of the 
Adirondacks is not saved for the mills. It is 
either floods or drouth. It is planned to build 
huge reservoirs to take the place of the wilder¬ 
ness which is just another way of spoiling for 
all time the Adirondack region. The cost of 
the dams, which would be many millions of 
dollars, would replant the wilderness to spruce 
and pine forest, and this forest, carefully tended, 
would not only regulate the flow of the streams, 
but would at the same time bring back to the 
upper Hudson all its wilderness glory, its valu¬ 
able timber and its vast annual export of logs 
for paper and lumber. 
This work of reforestation has just begun and 
millions of trees are being set out every year 
under the guidance of the Forest, Fish and Game 
Commission. This work is rapidly extending, 
but not so rapidly as it would extend if the 
forest department was allowed to go ahead with 
ample funds. There ought to be at least one 
great tree nursery in every Adirondack county, 
and every acre of the tens of thousands of bar¬ 
ren and skinned State lands should be planted 
to trees. Spruce grows fast, and in a few years 
a planted growth would conserve the water and 
regulate its flow. In twenty years I have seen 
a little brook dried up, and then its flow begun 
again under a natural growth following the cut¬ 
ting. How much more quickly a carefully 
tended chopping would yield regulated streams. 
The $50,000 in wages lost at Corinth last sum¬ 
mer would have been saved by the expenditure 
of a little care in the wilderness a few years 
ago. The upper Hudson watershed is about 
4,500 square miles in area. Of this, perhaps 
3,000 square miles could be used for forestry to 
better advantage than for any other purpose, 
considering the value of regulating stream flow. 
It is worth less than $10 an acre now, leaving 
out developed and lakeside lands. At $10 an 
acre it could be reforested, and this would make 
an investment of $20 an acre, say, or the capital 
required. This would make a forest investment 
of, say, $40,600,000. The land would then be 
' worth not less than $40 an acre and in a few 
years it would be yielding an income of several 
per cent, on the investment through sale of pulp. 
In addition, the upper Hudson would no longer be 
poverty-stricken. There would be work in the 
woods and in the mills. In one town like Corinth 
the saving would be $50,000 wages a year through 
regulation of water flow. Hundreds of thousands 
of dollars would be saved in this valley through 
mere water regulation. This saving would pay 
interest on millions of the investment made by 
the State, while landholders would make money 
directly through their own efforts and invest¬ 
ment. 
Already some tree plantations have been made 
in the Hudson watershed. There is growing up 
some natural seedings of spruce and pine which 
in a few years will be income making. Work in 
these natural seedings at odd times on the part 
of the landowners would eventually develop 
them into excellent timber holdings, but com¬ 
pared to the waste the good growth is sad to 
contemplate, because it is of such small pro¬ 
portion. 
There was enough waste of time and energy 
during the past two years in the Hudson water¬ 
shed to have prepared thousands of acres of 
land for seeding and planted the seeds had there 
been any way of utilizing the men who were 
compelled to be idle through failure of the 
water supply. All the waste lands in sight of 
Corinth, for instance, might have been seeded 
last summer and this summer if the men who 
were longing to work could have been put to 
