CanÌƒon City record. [volume] (CanÌƒon City, Colo.) 1883-192?, 1901-06-13
Communicated.
The Bird, The Horticulturist's Friend

To the Editor of the RECORD:
There is wide difference of opin-
ion among orchardists whether spray
ing is beneficial or otherwise, in pro-
tecting the trees and fruit from insect
enemies. | do not pretend to decide
this question; this / will say; the
man that sprays is taking the hardest
method possible in fighting the bugs
that are destroying his trees and
fruit. He is beating the air, throw
ing away his time and money, as
nature has provided means that would
do the work better than we could
possibly do it, if we would only assist
her in maintaining the equilibrium
between noxious insects and their
enemies.
1t is a law of biology that species
under favorable circumstances will
increase vastly in numbers; as for
example, the enormous growth of the
rabbi plague in Australia, in spite of
all the artificial means employed for
their destruction.
There are numerous insects that
prey upon those that are destructive
to trees. OF course, their habitat
is upon the trees and among the
noxious bugs; and it follows, natural
ly, that spraying destroys them with
the species we are after. Tie truth
of this can be proven by anyone
taking the trouble to examine closely
the trees after spraying.
Now, | come to my hobby, the
greatest and most effective enemies
of insects are insectivorous birds.
They are specially endowed by nature
for the purpose; the bug is their
natural food, rejecting those species
that prey upon other bugs, so natural
lists tell us. Unfortunately, the bird
has relentless enemies, the worst be-
ing the unconscionable savage that
calls himself, man, and his worthy
mate, that marauding old humbug, the
house cat. OF these two, the man is
infinitely the worse, being armed with
diabolical inventions of destruction
of his own, besides having the same
natural thirst for blood and slaughter
the cat has. In this connection |
would say that | have seen, at the
east end of Lincoln Park, gang of
men with their bloody game bags full
of Meadow Larks. They call this
sport, | think. / call it murder, and
in my opinion, any one of these
Larks was of more benefit to
the body polite than the men that
destroyed them. Mankind seems
bent upon the killing of all birds,
what with niger shooters and Flo
bert rifles and sportsmen's shot guns,
the work of slaughter of our friends
goes merrily on. Now, | would say
that do not object to true sport so
much. The killing of game birds in
season under proper restrictions
might not be very Objectionable. But
this indiscriminate popping away at
every bird that comes in sight ought
to be stopped by law. There are
sufficient good laws upon the statute
books Of Colorado to protect our
birds, and at the same time protect
our fruit trees from the insect pests
that are getting worse every year.
The birds want to come and live in
our orchards and among our trees.
can prove this by my own observa-
tion in other places. Last season |
visited the locality in Illinois where
formerly lived. There are many
large commercial orchards in that
vicinity. Some fifteen years ago the
people became tired of spraying the
air in the neighborhood of their or
chards and resolved to try the expert
ment of protecting the bug-eating
birds and see if that would not check
the ravages of the insects. Every
farmer and fruitgrower and every
farmer boy constituted himself a com