Dodgeville chronicle. [volume] (Dodgeville, Wis.) 1862-current, 1870-07-22
I'm Behalf of the Birds.

THE great value of birds-such as the
starting, the sparrows, the crows, the jays,
etc.-that feed upon the most destructive
kind of insects, has been, until very recent
ly, unappreciated. Mos. Of them have
been treated as outlaws, and in repayment
for their signal services have been neglect
ed or prosecuted, until the unchecked and
enormous increase of the most noxious in
sects, throughout the continent of Europe,
has become a subject Orwell founded alarm
calling for the intervention of government,
both for their immediate destruction and
for the protection of those birds that feed
upon them. From these facts two prom.
inent conclusions have been pretty surely
reached: first, that birds are Indispensable
to European agriculture and second, that
those birds most generally protected and
known as the "useful birds" are as q
general thing of very little service in ar
resting the increase of those insects the
ravages of which are the most to be dread
ed, These lessons are as significant to us
of America as to the agriaulturists OF
Europe. When will our intelligent farm
ers awaken both to their danger and the
only remedys
An agricultural journal, the Bumd, pub.
lished in Berne, with much ability and
force demonstrates that the enormous
losses Detailing European agriculture can
only be arrested when man himself shall
not only cease to disturb the great equi-
poise of nature, and no longer in mere
wantonness, prejudice, superstition, or
on other equally worthless grounds, perse-
cute and destroy the natural extermina-
tors of insects, but instead shall extend to
them the greatest possible protection,
even to the nourishing and caring Tor
them in the wintry season.
While this same journal finds much to
rejoice at in cantonal laws for the protec-
ton of useful birds, and yet more in the
general spirit in which they are observed,
it urges greater attention to instruction
upon these subjects in scbools, and dwells
with much perrinence upon the radical in
completeness of the laws. The following
is as well adapted to Our own meridian rs
to thst of Switzerland: For example,
when We see the sparrow (which has been
acclimated at such great expense in
America), the crow, the raven, and others
of our most useful birds still outlawed in
individual cantons; when we see the hunt
ing of our singing birds still allowed at
certain seasons In others, and that protec-
ton is only given to the smaller birds,
emitting the far more useful owls, buzz
yards. and jackdaws, we can but admit the
incompleteness of our enactments, and
are forced to an earnest wish that in all
those cantons where this half legislation
exists, Q change may soon be made that
shall place them more in conformity with
the present standpoint of science"
These exhortations are pregnant with
meaning and with warning to us, for we
stand even more than the writer's coun-
trymen in need of intelligent legislation,
and far more in need of careful investiga-
ton, the diffusion of light, and the dis
semipation of truth. These words of the
Bund would surely demonstrate that the
farmers best friends are the very birds he
now most frequently persecutes. They
stand between his crops and their de-
stroyers. They are his standing army, his
police force. Their admirable powers of
flight, their yet more wonderful gifts of
vision, and their instructive enmity to his
foes, most marvelously adapt them to DO
duty in field where man himself is pow
erless.-Atl07atac Monthly.