o agriculture.--(End of the circular.)

* * * * *

The following appeared in the _Zoological Society Bulletin_, for
January, 1909, from Richard Walter Tomalin, of Sydney, N.S.W.:

"In the subdistricts of Robertson and Kangaloon in the Illawarra
district of New South Wales, what ten years ago was a waving mass of
English cocksfoot and rye grass, which had been put in gradually as the
dense vine scrub was felled and burnt off, is now a barren desert, and
nine families out of every ten which were renting properties have been
compelled to leave the district and take up other lands. This is through
the grubs having eaten out the grass by the roots. Ploughing proved to
be useless, as the grubs ate out the grass just the same. Whilst there
recently I was informed that it took three years from the time the grubs
were first seen until to-day, to accomplish this complete devastation;.
in other words, three years ago the grubs began work in the beautiful
country of green mountains and running streams.

"The birds had all been ruthlessly shot and destroyed in that district,
and I was amazed at the absence of bird life. The two sub-districts I
have mentioned have an area of about thirty square miles, and form a
table-land about 1200 feet above sea level."

The same kind of common sense that teaches men to go in when it rains,
and keep out of fiery furnaces, teaches us that as a business
proposition it is to man's interest to protect the birds. Make them
plentiful and keep them so. When we strike the birds, we hurt ourselves.
The protection of our insect-eating and seed-eating birds is a cash
proposition,--protect or pay.

Were I a farmer, no gun ever should be fired on my premises at any bird
save the English sparrow and the three bad hawks. Any man who would kill
my friend Bob White I would treat as an enemy. The man who would shoot
and eat any of the song-birds, woodpeckers, or shorebirds that worked
for me, I would surely molest.

_Every farmer should post every foot of his lands, cultivated and not
cultivated_. The farmer who does not do so is his own enemy; and he
needs a guardian.

At this stage of wild life extermination, it is impossible to make our
bird-protection laws too strict, or too far-reaching. The remnant of our
birds should be protected, with clubs and guns if necessary. All our
shore birds should be accorded a ten-year close season. Don't ask the
gunners whether they wil