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Smare Pet DepaRTMENT: 
4@> All communications and contributions intended for this depart- 
ment should be addressed to HOWARD I. IRELAND, Concordville, 
Delaware County, Pa. 
(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
A WORD FOR THE BIRDS. 
Ir is the sacred duty of every cultivator of the soil to care 
for and protect the birds. No matter whether he be farmer, 
trucker, nurseryman, or small fruit grower, insectivorous 
birds are an incalculable blessing to him. What if birds do 
once in a while eat a little ripe fruit, pull up a few growing 
plants, or pierce a choice tree? These same plants, these 
very trees, the birds in the spring saved from a sure death 
by insects ; and yet, because they now, when the insects are 
searce, get part of their subsistence from fruit, grain, and 
berries, we bring out all the rusty old firearms in the house 
with which to shoot them. Is this not the basest kind of 
ingratitude? One insect—thousands of the same species 
birds devour each day—will do more harm to our plants 
and trees than the birds accomplish in the course of their 
lives. This perhaps looks exaggerated, but nevertheless 
every word of it is pure truth. 
Take the birds from our land and the insects, having 
nothing to interrupt their multiplying, will increase so 
rapidly as to swarm over the country like the ‘‘ plague of 
fleas,’ destroying every green thing growing. We can 
only approach this fact by considering that a female insect 
sometimes produces over a million young at a time, and 
these having no birds to thin them out, their number would 
soon become enormous. : 
A wren—one of the smallest of our birds—deyours in the 
course of twenty-four hours over a thousand insects. Thus 
we see how the birds hold in sway this enormous host. 
Even the blackbird more than compensates by the grubs 
and worms it devours in the spring for the corn it destroys 
in the autumn. In 1749 a legal reward of three pence per 
dozen for blackbirds was offered by the Hastern States. 
But a total loss of crops by the depredations of insects was 
the result of this barbarous measure, and the law had to be 
repealed. 
In the spring, when the robin devours grubs and insects, 
we encourage him to build near our houses; but later in 
the season, when insects fail him and he occasionally re- 
freshes himself on a ripe cherry, we pepper away at him 
with an old shot-gun. Meanwhile enough cherries are 
rotting on the ground to suffice a hundred robins a whole 
season. Alas, what a base return for the good he did in the 
spring ! 
Why destroy the inoffensive barn owl? In one night he 
will devour more rats and mice than grimalkin can catch in 
a week. If one makes its home in your barn, instead of 
telling the boys to kill it, encourage it to remain. Barn 
owls will not harm the pigeons, but will soon clear your 
barn of rats and mice. 
King birds—one of man’s best feathered friends—suffer 
persecution because some one has circulated a report that 
they feed almost solely upon honey bees. This idea is 
erroneous., Perhaps once in a great while they will eata 
honey bee, but very seldom. No chicken hawk will ap- 
proach your hen-house if a pair of king birds tenant a tree 
near by. 
Thus I might go on enumerating numerous other birds 

FANCIERS’ JOURNAL AND POULTRY EXCHANGE. 
ee eS eo 
that suffer persecution because of false reports circulating 
concerning their evil qualities, and refute each charge, but 
I refrain from want of space. 
Kill your cats and encourage barn owls to make their 
residence in your barn. It costs nothing to keep them, and 
they never lap the cream from off the milk, eat your young 
squabs, or kill the young rabbits; and they will do their 
work of clearing the premises of ratssand mice much more 
effectively than pussy. Build boxes for the martins and 
blue birds. Put up old shoes, boots, hats—anything with a 
hole in for entrance—all around your farm for the wrens to 
build in—they will do it. Loan your empty chimneys to 
the swallows. Never attempt to smoke them out, as some 
heathen persons do. In the winter throw the crumbs from 
the table to the little birds. Sweep up the oats, wheat, etc., 
that lay loose on the barn floor, and give it to the larks and 
quails. 
Thoroughly trounce every youngster you catch stealing 
birds’ eggs. Prosecute every vagrant ‘pot-hunter” you 
find shooting on your premises. If you ever have the 
‘‘blues,’? vent your wrath on these destroyers of God’s 
feathered creatures; it will do you good. Bring up your 
children to love and protect these beautiful songsters. 
Paut Loatc. 

(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
GUINEA PIGS. 
SomrHow these pets of my childhood have fallen into 
disrepute among the youngsters of later days. Well, no 
matter; I will, for the sake of gone-by days, endeavor to 
say something in their favor. They will not bite or scratch, 
nor are they as liable to disease as the rabbit, and are much 
more prolific than the latter, generally having eight or ten 
atatime. As their young seldom die, they raise more than 
the rabbit usually does. When they are kept solely for 
pets, I do not see but that they answer that purpose quite as 
well as any other animal. A house for them can be made 
from an old dry-goods box, with fine shavings or hay for 
bedding. Their food should be oats, clover, ete. They will 
eat anything without injury a rabbit will, and a great many 
things a rabbit will not. Keep them in a dry place, and 
allow them but little water, and you will never be troubled 
by disease appearing among your pets. You need not keep 
the buck separated from the doe; he will not eat the young, 
as the male rabbit does when allowed to remain with the 
doe. 
Some say Guinea pigs will destroy rats. To this I can 
say nothing, either in the affirmative or negative. When 
I kept them there were no.rats to trouble me. But a friend 
once told me he knew of a person who kept them during 
the winter in a hay-mow, and that he had seen them 
repeatedly kill rats and mice. PuHILo. 

(For Fanciers’ Journal.) 
A CHEAP BIRD-BOX. 
A Box for birds to build in can be very easily made, and 
with little expense, by merely putting a peaked cover over 
the tops of the fence posts, making an auger-hole in one of 
the sides for the birds to enter. The plan is very simple, 
and it will answer the purpose for which it is intended as 
well as a more costly box; besides, the cover preserves the 
post from decay at the top, and adds greatly to its beauty. 
Dy Lr 
