WONDER if any reader of this article was ever present when a State legislature considered the question of licensing cats. If so, he must have been impressed anew with several facts, one of them being that in spite of all the information disseminated by the ornithological and biological bureaus of the Federal and State governments, and by other ornithologists, regarding the economic value of our common birds, the average man is still blind to the importance of the subject. Of course, one doesn't expect a State legislator to be swayed by sentiment; one expects him, rather, to yield to economic pressure! Yet when the question of establishing a cat license, as we now have a dog license, comes up, the only economic argument your average legislator can see is on the other side. The cats catch rats in the farmer's barn. We mustn't do anything to lose the rural vote! The Congressional wag makes a funny speech about pretty pussy and the old maids coming down-town to get their licenses, the legislative assembly titillates with mirth, and the bill is laid on the table. It would all be rather amusing if it weren't so serious.

How serious it is a very brief survey of the figures will show. The figures, too, may well be taken from reports by Edward Howe Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, whose own legislature has tabled a bill to license cats, with the usual display of Sunday-supplement humor. Mr. Forbush bases his figures on the reports of over a hundred observers throughout the State. "If we assume,' he says, "that the average cat on the farm kills but ten birds in a year, and that there are but two cats on each farm in Massachusetts, we have in round numbers 70,000 cats, killing 700,000 birds annually." As a matter of fact,

there are many more than 70,000 cats in Massachusetts, even on the farms, and those which live near the open, even in the suburbs, take a toll of bird life that is probably in excess of ten birds a year. A cat belonging to a neighbor of mine, not a farm cat, but a pampered house puss, brought twenty-six birds to the veranda last summer, and I have to wage a constant warfare on half a dozen sleek, well-fed house cats which daily try to catch birds in my garden. Doctor Forbush is too careful and conservative. The toll of bird life due to farm cats alone in the single State of Massachusetts is probably in excess of 1,000,000 a year. To this huge total we must probably add another 1,000,000 for the toll taken by the domestic pets and stray cats and their descendants, now gone wild. Few people have any conception of the number of cats gone wild there are in our woods.

Now, undoubtedly, if cats were licensed as dogs are, and men appointed to dispose of the strays, there would be a great and immediate diminution of the feline population, still more noticeable in a second generation, for the females would pay a higher fee. The cats which remained would be those valued and cared for as pets (and if a person isn't willing to pay one or two dollars a year for his or her pet, his attachment isn't very strong) or else those cats valuable as destroyers of rodents. The stray cat, that has to hunt for a living, would be eliminated, as would the present excess of half-stray house and barn cats. There would be little hardship to the farmer, because a good barn cat earns its license fee; and, besides, very few cats are as effective as traps, anyhow, as careful experiments have again and again proved. Finally, an added revenue would accrue to the State.

But why go to all this trouble merely to save 2,000,000 birds a year? asks the sentimental cat-lover, who would rather

have the cat than the bluebirds and song-sparrows, because he cannot pat a bluebird, nor dangle a string before its young.

The answer is, because the birds help to maintain the balance in nature between destructive insects and growing things, between weeds and flowers, and any serious diminution in our bird population means a serious increase in the ranks of our insect and vegetable foes. The birds are among our best and most valuable friends, while the cat, artificially bred and introduced, does not belong to the natural scheme of things. A bluebird, a barn-swallow, a screechowl, even a so-called "hen hawk" (which scarcely touches hens at all) has a definite economic value, and its protection by man from cats and other hunters, on four legs or two, from storms and starvation, is as useful, and some day we shall realize as necessary, as catching rats in the barn or spraying the potato-vines. Indeed, if every potato-field could harbor a bevy of quail (and it could if we had not been such game-hogs in America for a hundred years) there would be little call for Paris green or arsenate of lead.

Again let us quote figures. There are plenty of them. The appeal to sentiment in order to save the birds is not necessary. The matter can be reduced to a cold business proposition for the farmer, or for anybody else with trees and a garden.

In Farmers' Bulletin No. 513, prepared by the United States Bureau of Biological Survey, it is stated that at a conservative estimate the common tree-sparrow consumes a quarter of an ounce of weed seed a day. On this basis, in the State of Iowa alone, the bureau estimates these sparrows consume 875 tons of weed seeds. If you will try to imagine the acres upon acres which could be sown to weeds with such a pile, and the weeks upon weeks of labor necessary to harrow them out, you hardly need to be told further that the combined sparrow family (not including the pestiferous English sparrow) probably saved the farmers of the United States in 1910 $89,260,000.

Doesn't it begin to be apparent why the destruction of 2,000,000 birds a year

in one State alone, by cats, is a serious affair? If all those birds had been sparrows, that would mean a daily increase of 32,000 pounds in the number of weed seeds allowed to ripen, and possibly to germinate, in Massachusetts alone. Of course it doesn't mean quite that, for many birds do not live on weed seeds. On the other hand, many of them live on even more objectionable insects and tree pests. The economic loss is very clear and very serious.

Here is a paragraph from the same bulletin quoted above:

It is interesting to observe that hungry birds-and birds are hungry most of the time —are not content to fill their stomachs with insects or seeds, but, after the stomach is stuffed until it will hold no more, continue to eat till the crop or gullet also is crammed. It is often the case that when the stomach is opened and the contents piled up the pile is two or three times as large as the stomach was when filled. Birds may truly be said to have healthy appetites. To show the astonishing capacity of birds' stomachs and to reveal the extent to which man is indebted to birds for the destruction of noxious insects, the following facts are given as learned by stomach examinations made by assistants of the Biological Survey:

"A tree-swallow's stomach was found to contain 40 entire chinch-bugs and fragments of many others, besides 10 other species of insects. A bank-swallow in Texas devoured 68 cotton-boll weevils, one of the worst insect pests that ever invaded the United States; and 35 cliff-swallows had taken an average of 18 boll weevils each. Two stomachs of pine-siskins from Haywards, California, contained 1,900 black olive scales and 300 plant lice. A killdeer's stomach taken in November in Texas contained over 300 mosquito larvæ. A flicker's stomach held 28 white grubs. A night-hawk's stomach collected in Kentucky contained 34 May-beetles, the adult form of white grubs. Another nighthawk from New York had eaten 24 cloverleaf weevils and 375 ants. Still another night-hawk had eaten 340 grasshoppers, 52 bugs, 3 beetles, 2 wasps, and a spider. A boat-tailed grackle from Texas had eaten at one meal about 100 cotton-boll worms, besides a few other insects. A ring-necked pheasant's crop from Washington contained 8,000 seeds of chickweed and a dandelion head. More than 72,000 seeds have been found in a single duck stomach taken in Louisiana in February."

From so brief a survey as this of the

actual, ascertained facts about the habits and economic value of certain birds, it should at least be apparent even to a State legislator, one would suppose, that the subject of bird protection is important, worthy of investigation, not lightly to be dismissed. Some day these gentlemen will wake up, but probably not until public opinion wakes them, including the opinion of those most conservative of God's creatures, the farmers, who for the most part are not yet even dimly aware of how much they owe to birds and how sorely the birds need protection, need it more and more every year. Our birds are decreasing; our pests are increasing. And in part, at least, it is cause and effect, though the increased facilities of commerce have been responsible for some of our worst inflictions.

The limits of this article do not permit me to discuss at any length the harmful birds. They are relatively few in number, the worst being the goshawk, the Cooper and sharp-shinned hawks (which are the only ones that seriously raid poultry, the others doing more good than harm by destroying field-mice, moles, snakes, and the like). Bobolinks are harmful to the Southern rice-fields, destroying as high as ten per cent. of the crop. Crows are neither all bad nor all good; they are the most human of birds! The English sparrow is an undiluted pest because he drives out other and much more desirable birds, and should always be destroyed, either by poison, by traps, or by a gun. Knocking down the nest does no good, though taking out the eggs every day helps. The ro in and certain other birds sometimes seriously raid small-fruit crops, particularly the cherry, but by planting a few trees of a wild variety on the edge of an orchard they can be controlled; and in most cases the good they do outbalances the harm. The great bulk of our common North American birds are unreservedly our friends, in a very real sense, working for us at least ten hours a day, busily, without pay, singing at their labors, destroying insect pests, keeping down weeds, grubbing up worms, helping the beneficent forces in nature in their endless battle with the parasites. Their total economic value

in this capacity is far up in the millions of dollars. Their destruction would mean a very grave disturbance of the balance of nature; and, conversely, their protection by every means in our power is as much a duty as any other form of conservation. Sentiment may be left quite out of the question.

Over perhaps the worst foe of bird life we have no control-the weather. A bad winter twelve years ago killed nearly all the quail in Massachusetts, for example. The exceptionally deep snow of the winter of 1915-16, also, my own observations lead me to believe, wrought great havoc among the partridges and pheasants. Storms may catch the migratory birds when over the water, and destroy them by the thousands. The

cold, wet, late spring of 1917, in the Northeastern States, exacted a pathetic toll from the warblers. These beautiful little birds, of so many and bewildering varieties, are entirely insectivorous and seem never to have learned how to eat anything else, even in times of dire need. Migrating in May over a land still too cold and wet for insect life to be active, they were hard pressed, and came into our gardens by the thousands, looking for food in the newly turned earth. I often had red-starts and Blackburnians hopping on my very feet as I hoed or cultivated. They not only died of starvation in droves, but fell, through weakness, an easy prey to cats. A cat belonging to a neighbor of mine was seen to kill ten warblers in a single afternoon.

But, next to the elements, man is the birds' chief foe-man, the cruelest of God's creatures. Not only does he turn his cats loose to prey, and go out himself with a gun to slaughter, but gradually, as more and more land comes under cultivation, he is destroying the cover for the birds, taking away their nestingplaces, driving them, his best friends, unconsciously from his door. I never see the modern slaughter with a brush scythe along a country road, for instance, without thinking not only how much beauty of wild landscape gardening has been laid low, but how many nesting-places have been laid low, also nesting-places for birds that are the farmers' assistants. The vireos and chipping-sparrows love to nest in friend

ly proximity to a road or lane, in shrubs or low trees, and both varieties of birds are great insect-destroyers. The sparrow also eats weed seeds. A nest of four young sparrows was watched by a Government observer at different hours on four different days, and the result was that a day's average rations for the brood was 238 insects and caterpillars. How can any one doubt that it pays to have as many chipping-sparrows as possible nesting near one's farm and orchard?

The problem of attracting the birds back to our dwellings and farms, of assisting them to breed in safety, of providing them with proper shelter, and, in seasons when their natural foodsupply is difficult to get, of furnishing them the food their active little bodies demand, is not one that can be solved by law. All laws which protect the beneficent birds from destruction by pot and feather hunters, by cats and game-hogs, are of course necessary, and will have to be ever more strictly enforced. But it is of slight avail to protect the robin from the pot hunter of the South during the winter season, only to let him freeze and starve during à late spring snow-storm in the North, for lack of evergreens to take shelter in, or any food-bearing shrubs above the snow. What is the bluebird to do, or the chickadee, or the downy woodpecker, if he flies to his grove where the hole for his nest was so tempting the year beforeand finds no grove there? What are the quail to do in winter when the few who have escaped the hunters find all their food-supply buried deep in snow, at the very time that their bodies need a big supply to keep them warm? Such questions as these are not to be answered by laws. They are only to be answered by individual and community effort.

But, as a matter of fact, they can be answered, and rather easily. How easily, I have illustrated for myself. I live on a five-acre place, on the main street of a village in western Massachusetts. The heavy snow of March, 1916, lay deep in my yard even on the 1st of April, when a flock of juncos made their appearance. They joined the chickadees and treesparrows and other birds which had been with us all winter, in the steady

procession down to the feeding-shelf outside the kitchen window. But I decided there were too many of them for that small supply station, so I packed down with my snow-shoes a considerable area on the other side of the house, and scattered seeds and fine mixed chicken feed (which I had been using for pheasants) on the hard snow. The juncos immediately discovered it, as did a flock of horned larks (rare visitors with us). As the snow rapidly melted, I kept food scattered about. In a few days the lawn was visible, but the birds were still there, and in the morning, when I got up, there would be no less than a hundred of them scratching and pecking in the grass. I stopped putting out food now, but they did not stop pecking. In the section where they worked, the lawn is spoiled late each summer by crab grass, an abominable annual, which spreads low and ripens in spite of the mower, thus seeding itself. That flock of birds was after the seed and doing me a valuable service. A little feeding at a time when they needed it kept them on my premises until they were ready to migrate northward.

Outside my kitchen door stands an apple-tree. Just beyond this tree is a thick stand of pines, partly on my land, partly across the fence on my neighbor's. All winter long a large number of birds ride out the severest storms in the safe shelter of these evergreens, and come to the apple-tree for a perch before darting down to the window-ledge for sunflower seeds and suet. Last winter our all-winter guests included chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, a pair of golden-crowned kinglets, tree-sparrows, a pair of downy woodpeckers (their third winter), a pair of red - breasted nuthatches (their third winter also), several blue jays, and a cock pheasant, which stalked up in a stately manner over the snow nearly every morning. The chickadees would alight on our fingers, our heads and shoulders, and even hop through the open door or window into the house and eat from a dish on the table. But neither chickadees, nuthatches, nor woodpeckers were made lazy by this feeding. They continued, even after a square meal, to hop up and down and round about every limb and