The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-04-17

the havoc he created, however, he Ire quently appears as pet in charge Of those who should know better One woman succeeded in getting her spec I imen through the customs and in safe- tysto a New York hotel. There. how ever. his presence became known and 1 in aefew hours an inspector appeared
 to carry off the obnoxious visitor. tStill the mongoose does get in and does escape when he sim A Cape lCod farmer whose poultry yard suf- 1 tered nightly raids lay in wait for the intruder and succeeded in shooting an
 animal the like of which neither he
 nor his friends had seen before. Ul- itimately the authorities recognized It l as a mongoose, but to this day one
 knows what series Of adventures led l to his presense in Cape Cod.
 His presence in this hemisphere at all is due to the mistaken notion that l he would be invaluable Tn ridding the cane fields of the West Indies of rats
 In 1872 MT. Espent introduced nine l of the animals fourznales and five fe-
 They Increased with such startling irapidity that in 1890 government lcommission endeavored to find some way of externinating the pests Isv- fdence collected at that time showed that the harm the creatures did far ioutweighedx any benefit to the sugar
 and coffee planfations. In the mean
 time attempts had been made to in 1 tfoduce the mongoose into Hawaii but
 fortunately they were not so success fuI.
 l Still another instance of the case with which experiments of this kind run away with the experimenters is i the Australian rabbit. Rab bits were originally brought to Australia to pro- vide sport for the early settlers. It
 proved expensive sport.
 Millions of doIlafs,'' says a report
 of the Department of Agricu1ture,s :
 have been spent for bounties. poisons, and various other methods of destruc- |tfon; thousands Of miles. of rabbit
 proof fences have been built, and hundreds of schemes for destroying the animals have been suggested, but nothing has yet been found that win Iemeetual1y exterminate the pestn
 It can in fact be safely asserted that no one is able to predict accurate l ly what will be the behavior of any form of life when taken from its ac- customed environment and placed in new surroundings, but the great ma jorfty of the pests which have been brought from Europe and gained foothold here have been vastly more Destructive in this country than they showed themselves in their old home They are freed from their natural en- temfes who formerly preyed upon them, they find a longer summer and in con- lsequence a longer breeding season than they are accustomed to, and the large scale on which American agri- culture is oonducted does not permit so readily Of restrictive measures as I the limited holdings and intensive cI1I-s tivation general in Europe Tn the course of centuries it is probable that Nature, left to herself, would find
 means to reduce their ravages to the original dimensions. but a century or two, mere trifle in the eyes of Na- Iture, is a long time to the farmer who isees his crops fail and his live stock Isfcken. For this reason the govern ments of all new countries are today extremely wary of inportatfons that
 may produce results quite different from those that are Hoped for.f On the other hand the Old World is by no means so receptive to pests that reach It from the new Many die out com ipleteiy and few proVe< serious lscourges An important exception to this, however, is the phy1loxera, which has worked untold evil in the vine yards of Europe The disease vas drought from America in shipment of rooted vines to France in 1859 Sinca
 then it has proved itself a pest of the livery first class, sweeping the vine dis ttricts of Europe with far greater f1az tvastation than it was capable of here. l The necessity for rigid regulations that such facts as these have i'm
 pressed upon all progressive eovern- Tneats is rarely recognized by the in 1diyidual who for one reason or anat11er
 wishes to introduce plant a bird or an animal as a pet. The San lose scale was brought into this country from its original home in a remote region of China by4an ardent hortf- lculturist who desired to add aovS,s Chinese apple trees to his extensive lhort1cultural gardens at San Jose. ICaHfornfa Incidentally it Is c,1yio1,s that from California. the pest re crossed the Pacific to Japan. wI,ict, had previously been immune The English sparrow, like the noonpoosa IS an instance of an anticipated bless ] Ing that l~turned into a curse and Isomething of the same sort is feared
 in connection with the starling n Europe the starling is regarded not only as beneficial but considerable
 sentiment is attached to it, as readers
 of Jacob Esiis, 4sT41e Old Tf5Se,,s. 1,75II
 remember It was fherefofa ,,";+a natural that several attempts s,oI1Td be made to acclimatfze the bird i1,s America, the most important being 4he liberation of a flock of 60 in 1890 But no sooner did the starling prosper and increase than another side of his na-s Iure appeared Travelling 1T, large hocks he forcibly dfspokses sIIch
 peaceful birds as the swallow wren. I and bluebird of their nests in the holes. of trees and in addition he is under serious suspicion of being great fruit eater
 In the case of large animals. if is
 not their own increase which is feared but that of the diseases and parasites l that they bring with them Recently.
 for example. six namas were shipped rom Peru, one of them intended as
 present. it was said, to Secretary
 Bryan They were all excluded. not
 because anyone feared that we would
 De overrun by escaped and rapidIys
 propogating llamas, but for the simple
 reason that they had the mange and
 might spread it. Moreover under 20
 circumstances would they have been
 permitted to enter the country, since
 the law prohibits the importation of
 live stock from South America on ac-
 count of the prevalence there of the dreaded hoof and mouth disease The