I
left the Administration Building at six o'clock, after the visitors had
gone, I found two half-grown rabbits calmly roosting on the door-mat.
The rabbits are slowly coming back, and the chipmunks are visibly
increasing in number. The gray squirrels now chase over the walks
without fear of any living thing, and our ducklings and young guineas
and peacocks are safe once more.

That cats destroy annually in the United States several _millions_ of
very valuable birds, seems fairly beyond question. I believe that in
settled regions they are worse than weasels, foxes, skunks and mink
_combined_; because there are about one hundred times as many of them,
and those that hunt are not afraid to hunt in the daytime. Of course I
am not saying that _all_ cats hunt wild game; but in the country I
believe that fully one-half of them do.

I am personally acquainted with a cat in Indiana, on the farm of
relatives, which is notorious for its hunting propensities, and its
remarkable ability in capturing game. Even the lady who is joint owner
of the cat feels very badly about its destructiveness, and has said,
over and over again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a
family pet that no one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as
yet no stranger has come forward to play the part of executioner. The
lady in question assured me that to her certain knowledge that
particular cat would watch a nestful of young robins week after week
until they had grown up to such a size that they were almost ready to
fly; then he would kill them and devour them. Old "Tommy" was too wise
to kill the robins when they were unduly small.

In a great book entitled _Useful Birds and Their Protection_, by E.H.
Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, and published by the
Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture in 1905, there appears, on page
362, many interesting facts on this subject. For example:

Mr. William Brewster tells of an acquaintance in Maine, who said
that his cat killed about fifty birds a year. Mr. A.C. Dike wrote
[to Mr. Forbush] of a cat owned by a family, and well cared for.
They watched it through one season, and found that it killed
fifty-eight birds, including the young in five nests.

Nearly a hundred correspondents, scattered through all the counties
of the state, report the cat as one of the greatest enemies of
birds. The reports that have come in of the torturing and killing of
birds by ca