The Economic Value of BirdsByJohn H. Wallace, Jr., of Huntsville, Ala.
ByJohn H. Wallace, Jr., of Huntsville, Ala.
The time has come when the people must call a halt on the reckless and wanton slaughter of the small remnant of the game birds and game mammals, or in a few years not a vestige will remain.
This can be done only by the enactment and enforcement of a law that will in reality protect the game.
We have game laws, but there is no popular demand, or public sentiment, that calls for their enforcement. All readily agree that infractors of the existing statutes should be prosecuted, yet no one seems to be called upon to instigate prosecutions.
The game law is violated, in most instances, because the offenders know that they will not be indicted.
We need a uniform law, a game warden who has the authority to appoint deputies in each county and precinct in the State, whose duty it is to enforce the game law and bring the breakers thereof to justice.
Let every sportsman and lover of bird life in the country take up the fight for such a law, and wage a vigorous and determined campaign for its speedy enactment.
Game birds, to some extent, by virtue of their already deplorable scarcity, have elicited protective legislation. The mind of man imperatively demands recreation. Unless diversion can be found in a legitimate vein he, in his great unrest, seeks that which is not wholesome.
Hunting has ever been the sport of kings, peasants and savages alike, and the chase will always hold for man an incomparable infatuation.
When America was first discovered, here abounded an idealistic sportsman’s paradise. Buffalo, deer, moose, elk, bear, and panther roamed the forests. Geese, duck, brant, swan and wild pigeons flew overhead in countless millions. Practically all have been slaughtered, and the great sport once enjoyed by primeval Nimrods lingers only in a tradition.
The few remaining species of game birds should be vigilantly protected against annihilation, and so propagated that gentlemen will consider the pursuit of the elusive denizens of the brush infinitely preferable to Bacchanal hilarity and that riotous revelry that emasculates all that is noble, pure and godlike in man’s architecture.
The great question of the cause of the prevalence of plant maladies and the problem of the weed control each year grows more harassing to the farmers. The reason for this is simple. Our most beneficial birds, among them doves, robins, field larks and bullbats, have been so ruthlessly destroyed that in less than a generation their numbers have decreased 80 per cent.
When the fact is recalled that the crop of one dove, recently killed in Tennessee, contained over 7,000 weed seeds, and when it is understood that a healthy dove will destroy each feeding day at least 5,000 prospective weeds, more than two negroes, working at $1.50 per day each, could uproot in double the time, it is easy to see, from the tons upon tons of weed seed (besides insects) that this bird would destroy each year, that our cheapest, most efficient hoe hand proves in the end to be the Alabama dove.
As an insect devourer, the bullbat is equally serviceable. Its stomach is elastic and will hold more than that of a pigeon, and its voracity is simply phenomenal, yet its diminutive frame is smaller than that of a “killdee.” The part borne by the bullbat in mosquito destruction, especially in the extermination of the “anopheles,” or malaria-spreading species, transcends the combined work of a case of quinine and a tank of kerosene oil. As a fever germabater in a malarial district, a flock of bullbats would be worth a grove of quinine trees.
Besides the robin and field lark, already mentioned, both being insect and weed destroyers, there are many other birds that do invaluable work for the farmer without. The ravages made by the dreaded Mexican boll weevil, that devastates cotton fields like a withering simoon, cannot be checked in a surer way than by being obliterated by our insectivorous birds.
If our people could fully appreciate the value of preserving the existing remnant of our birds, without considering its future increase, the halls of our State capitol would resound with an emphatic and peremptory demand for adequate legislation, for the preservation of our birds means little less than the preservation of our agriculture itself. Their extinction would amount practically to wiping out the entire farming interests of our splendid commonwealth.
Statistics incontestably demonstrate the fact that rainfall not only regulates the yield of our plantation, but that it directs and controls the fate of our national politics. When rainfall is light, the people raise poor crops, and are therefore unhappy and discontented. It is then they desire to make a change in the administration of the governmental affairs, and therefore the party in power is deposed. When there is an excess of rainfall abundant crops result and the party in power is retained. Thus it is that, unless speedy legislation is had in order that the insectivorous birds remaining may be retained to do valiant service for their farmer friends, discord will perennially blight the heart of the happy husbandman, and political chaos and turbulence will reign throughout the nation, and the anthems of contentment and cadences of prosperity will not longer pervade the hearts of the honest sons of toil, but will be hushed and swallowed up by the sighs and groans of the imp of insatiate despair.
Song birds, aside from their brilliant plumage, so pleasing to the observer, and their sweet music, redolent with liquid melody, have a civic value of inestimable intrinsic worth that, if truly known and practically comprehended, would win millions of friends for the thrilling choristers of the fields and forests, who would indignantly halt the crusade of relentless extermination strenuously waged that gives excellent promise of ultimately depopulating all creation of man’s valiant army of feathered coadjutors.
Did you ever hear an inspiring strain of music that failed to thrill the soul with lofty ideals and more exalted aspirations?
All those who dwell in an atmosphere of intellectual refinement yearn for brilliant things in flowers, birds, sunsets, and in their fellow mortals. A heartless boy who recklessly slaughters birds will inevitably develop into a relentless man. If taught to hold the law in high esteem when young in years, he becomes a patriotic man, with a profound reverence for the statutes of his State. The most courageous men, bravest warriors, and the most aggressive leaders are those of gentle natures and of tender hearts. Instill these precepts into the souls of boys, and, existing in such noble environment, it will mold characters that will ornament society and serve to lift mankind from the miasmic swamps of degeneracy to the mountain tops where radiates the splendor of moral grandeur.
To help prevent the spread of the boll weevil, pass stringent laws for the protection of birds! Then let the planters insist that the bird laws be strictly enforced.
Note the following stupendous agricultural interests which are at stake:
Protect the birds—the farmers’ best helpers!
Digging Sweet Potatoes in Texas—a Plenteous Yield.
Digging Sweet Potatoes in Texas—a Plenteous Yield.
Digging Sweet Potatoes in Texas—a Plenteous Yield.