The Sentinel=record., 1914-04-12

o4lol dt dI tApeHSt LO tue SONeIu- ment of New South Whales for pow. der and shot means of dynamite and other high explosives was attempted The foxes avoided the trees that had been so carefully charged and the explosives did no harm.
 The mongoose is another creature which individuals persist in bringing uninvited to these shores. For this it is perhaps fair to hold Rudyard Kipling largely responsible. The mongoose he immortalized under the name of Riki-Tiki-Tavi in the Jan gle Book is a very attractive little hero, but no matter what the mon goose may be in India, in America he is nuisance. When no snakes are available to appease his ap- petite he does not scorn chickens, young pigs, kids, lambs, puppies, kit tens, vegetables and fruits. !,
 Despite overwhelming evidence of the havoc he created however, he frequently appears as pet in charge of those who should know better One woman succeeded in get ting her specimen through the GUS toms and in safety to New York hotel. There, however, his presence became known and in a few hours an inspector appeared to carry off the obnoxious visitor Still the mon goose does get in and does escape when he is in. A Cape Cod farmer whose poultry yard suffered nightly raids lay in wait for the intruder and succeeded in shooting an animal the like of which neither he nor his friends had ever seen before. Ulti- mately the authorities recognized it as a mongoose. but to this day no one knows what series of adventures led to his presence in Cape Cod.
 His presence in this hemisphere at all is due to the mistaken notion that he would be invaluable in rid ding the cane fields of the West Indies of rats. In 1872 a MT. Espent introduced nine of the animals, four males and five females into Jamaica for this purpose. They increased. with such startling rapidity that in 1890 a Government commission en- deavored to find some way of ex- terminating the pests. Evidence col lected at that time showed that the harm the creatures did far outweighed any benefit to the sugar and coffee plantations. In the meantime attempts had been made to intro duee the mongoose into Hawaii but fortunately they were not so success full
 Still anothehr instance of the case with which experiments of this kind run away with the experimenters is the Austrailiaa Rabbit. Rabbits were originally brought to Australia to provide sport for the early set tiers. It proved expensive sport.
 Million of dollars" says a report of the Department of Agriculture, have been spent for bounties, pois- ons, and various other methods Qf destruction; thousands of miles of rabbit-proof fences have been built and hundreds Of schemes for destroy. ing the animals have been suggested, but nothing has yet been found that will effectualIy exterminate the pest"
 1t can in fact be safely asserted that no one is able to predict accur- ately what will be the behavior of any form of life when taken from it's accustomed environment and placed in new surroundings, but the great majority of the pests which have been brought from Europe and gained a foothold here have been vastly more destructive in this coun- try than they showed themselves in their old home. They are freed from their natural enemies who formerly preyed upon them, they find no longer breeding season than they are accustomed to, and the large scale on which American agriculture is conducted does not permit so read fly of restrictive measures as the limited holdings and intensive culii- vation general in Europe. In the course of centuries it is proboble that Nature, left to herself, would find means to reduce their ravanges to the original dimensions, but century or two, mere trifle in the eyes of Nature. is long time to the farmer who sees his crops fail and live stock sicken. For this reason the governments of all new countries are today extremely wary of impor- tations that may produce results quite different from those that are hoped for. On the other hand the Old World is by no means so recep- tive to pests that reach it from the new. Many die out completely and few prove a serious scourge. An important exception to this, how ever, is the phylloxera which has worked untold evil in the vineyards of Europe. The disease was brought from America in shipment of root ed vines to France in 1859. Since then it has proved itself a pest of the very first class, sweeping the vine districts of Europe with far greater devastation than it was capa- ble of here.
 The necessity of rigid regulations