THE SMALL BIRD.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 55, 19 October 1911, Page 4

THE SMALL BIRD.

A contemporary reminds us that some ingenious person once discovered that the yield of clover seed in any district depended very largely upon the number of maiden ladies, of uncertain age, in the neighbourhood. Maiden ladies, he argued—rather in the style of . “This is the house that Jack built.”—keep cats, which" eat tiie mice, which destroy the nests of the humble bees, which fertilise the clover. Hence the more cats there were in a district, the fewer mice there would be, and the more bees. On the ame line, an Australian writer is arguing that the rabbit plague is directly responsible for the serious losses caused to fruit-growers by insect pests. To kill the rabbits, pcison'is laid for them, which is picked up by the bird, which rid fruit trees of blight and other posts, which reduce the yield of fruit. “There arc those,” says the writer, “who lay all the blame of the ascendency of grasshoppers, blow-flies,, and many other insect plagues which are yearly robbing producers of hundreds of thousands of pounds, at the door of the rabbit poisoner,” and he agrees with these who hold this view to the extent of admitting that the great destruction of bird life, which follows the use of poikon baits and poisoned water, “has given our insect enemies immeasurably greater scope to increase and multiply.” In Hungary some years ago very elaborate measures were taken to protect and encourage the increase' of insectivorous birds, and not all the farmers in New Zealand are agreed as to the wisdom of the perpetual campaign which is waged here against the small birds.