that in fighting pests the birds are worth ten times more to
men than all the poisons, sprays and traps that ever were invented or
used?

We cannot spray our forests; and if the wild birds do not protect, them
from insects, _nothing will_! If you will watch a warbler collecting the
insects out of the top of a seventy-foot forest oak, busy as a bee hour
after hour, it will convince you that the birds do for the forests that
which man with all his resources cannot accomplish. You will then
realize that to this country every woodpecker, chickadee, titmouse,
creeper and warbler is easily worth its weight in gold. The killing of
any member of those groups of birds should be punished by a fine of
twenty-five dollars.

[Illustration: THE PURPLE MARTIN
A Representative of the Swallow Family. A Great Insect-eater;
one of the Most Valuable of all Birds to the Southern Cotton
planter, and Northern farmer. Shot for "Food" in the South.
Driven out of the North by the English Sparrow Pest.]

THE BOB-WHITE.--And take the _Bob White Quail_, for example, and the
weeds of the farm. To kill weeds costs money--hard cash that the farmer
earns by toil. Does the farmer put forth strenuous efforts to protect
the bird of all birds that does most to help him keep down the weeds?
Far from it! All that the _average_ farmer thinks about the quail is of
killing it, for a few ounces of meat on the table.

It is fairly beyond question that of all birds that influence the
fortunes of the farmers and fruit-growers of North America, the common
quail, or bob white, is one of the most valuable. It stays on the farm
all the year round. When insects are most numerous and busy, Bob White
devotes to them his entire time. He cheerfully fights them, from sixteen
to eighteen hours per day. When the insects are gone, he turns his
attention to the weeds that are striving to seed down the fields for
another year. Occasionally he gets a few grains of wheat that have been
left on the ground by the reapers; but he does _no damage_. In
California, where the valley quail once were very numerous, they
sometimes consumed altogether too much wheat for the good of the
farmers; but outside of California I believe such occurrences are
unknown.

Let us glance over the bob white's bill of fare:

_Weed Seeds_.--One hundred and twenty-nine different weeds have been
found to contribute to the quail's bill of fare. Crops and stomachs have
been found crowded with rag-weed see