The log cabin Democrat., 1916-03-17
STOP BIRD MURDER
Scientists Protest Against Wan-
 ton Slaughter.
Farmers Fail to Appreciate the True Value of Their Feathered Helpers Their Work ExtoIIed as
 Foes of Insects.

St. Michaels, Md,-"If all the birds were destroyed the world would be overrun with insects in from seven to nine years,' says Michelet, the French historian.
 The slaughter of the bobwhite, bet ter known here as quail and partridge, has ceased, as the season is over and the bird is about extinct. The gun ners have been persistent and every covey that nested in the woods last summer was trailed and shot this win ter. Maryland is one of only six states, with the District of Columbia which has an open season for quail Forty-six states realize that the bob white is valuable asset and protect him from the gunner.
 The biological survey has been and is making efforts to teach the farmer that birds are his best friends and that without them farming would be impossible
 There is something more than game ness and six ounces of delicately f1av- ored meat to bobwhite. Dr. Sylvester Judd of the biological survey has held autopsies over hundreds of dead, and Mrs. Margaret Morse Nice of Clark university has played detective on bob white living. They have discovered that bobwhite is marvelously benef- cent to human kind. Nature has not provided such another scourge to in sects and eXterminator of weed seeds He is nonmigratory and will be found at his business place twelve months of the year.
 On his ordinary bill of fare will be found IA kinds of insects and 129 of weed seed, The gunner who shoots him imagines that grain is about all he eats. but as matter of fact it amounts to only one-sixth of his food for the year, and this is taken not from the standing crops or among the sheaves at harvest time, but from what escapes the reaper When grain is sprouting in the fields bobwhite has other matters to attend, for late in the spring and summer two-thirds of his food consists of the grains insect foes, which make 15 per cent on the years total in the wild, or more than third in captivity. It is an import ant list, too, for birds not of his kind eschew many of his favorites He likes the potato beetle, the cucumber beetle squash lady bug, corn bill bug, cHtworms, tobacco worms. clover wee vii, cotton boil weevil, imbricated snout beetle, May beetle, plant lice, grasshoppers, Rocky Mountain locust and chinch bug.
 The bobwhite chicks, eating A per cent of their weight daily. live for six weeks on insects, and in this time consume 10000 each. One. a week old, ate 2,326 plant lice and 20 meal worms, cnd was not done for the day. Hero are some single meals for adults:
 Boil weevils, 47: potato bugs. lO1; chinch bugs, 100; squash bugs, 12: army worms, 12; cutworms, 12 mos quitoes, 568-all in three hours. And as a sample of a days work, in addi- tion to seeds, grain and green food, note 1850 flies and 1,2S6 rose slugs. or 5000 plant lice
 In the winter months the bobwhite turns to weed seeds. which form more than half his food for the year, and here are samples of one birds con- sumption for one day:
 Darnyard grass. 2,500; beggar ticks. 1,400; black mustard, 2.50O burdock, GOO; crab grass. 2000: curled dock, 4,l75; dodder. 1.560; evening prim. rose, 10000; lambs quarters. l5,000; milkweed. ITO; pepper grass. 400; pigweod, l2,000; plantain. l25O0; rab- bits foot, clover. 30.000: bush clover, l,s9o. smartwead, 2.250; white yer