Page 235 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

!!
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS
To-day, from Halifax to Los Angeles, and from Key West to Victoria, adeadlycontestisbeingwaged. Thefruit-growers,farmers,forestowners and "park people" are engaged in a struggle with the insect hordes for thepossessionofthetrees,shrubsandcrops. Gooutintotheopen,with youreyesopen,andyouwillseeitforyourself. Millionsofdollarsare being expended in it. Look at this exhibit of what is going on around me, at this very moment,—July 19, 1912:
The bag insects, in thousands, are devouring the leaves of locust and maple trees.
The elm beetles are trying to devour the elms; and spraying is in progress.
The hickory-bark borers are slaughtering the hickories; and even some park people are neglecting to take the measures necessary to stop it
The tent caterpillars are being burned.
The aphis (scale insects) are devouring the tops of the white potatoes in the New York University school garden, just as the potato beetle does.
The codling moth larvae are already at work on the apples.
Theleavesaffectedbythewitchhazelgallflyarebeingcutofi" and burned.
These are merely the most conspicuous of the insect pests that I now see daily. I am not counting those of second or third-rate importance. Some of these hordes are being fought with poisonous sprays, some
are being killed by hand, and some are being ignored.
In view of the known value of the remaining trees of our country, each woodpeckerintheUnitedStatesisworthtwentydollarsincash. Each nuthatch, creeper and chickadee is worth from five to ten dollars, accord- ing to local circumstances. You might just as well cut down four twenty- inch trees and let them lie and decay, as to permit one woodpecker to be killed and eaten by an Italian in the North, or a negro in the South. The downy woodpecker is the relentless enemy of the codling moth, an insect that annually inflicts upon our apple crop damages estimated by the experts of the U. S. Department of Agriculture at twelve million dollars
Now, is a federal strong-arm migratory bird law needed for such birds or not ? Let the owners of orchards and forests make answer.
The Case of the Codling Moth and Curculio.—The codling moth and curculio are twin terrors to apple-growers, partly because of
{/