FACSIMILE OF DIPLOMA FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
My irrigation plant in south Georgia having proved a success, the Department of Agriculture at Washington sent a special irrigation engineer to Tompkins plantation to make a report. Such a good report was made that the Department conferred upon me the title of Collaborator of Irrigation, giving me a diploma stating this fact.
As I stated near the beginning of this story of my life, I believe that my mind and temperament are those of a naturalist. From my boyhood my interest in birds has never abated. I know their habits, I can distinguish the notes of all the birds of our woods and recognize them by their flight as far as my eyes can see.
This spring (1916) while seated on the porch of our home, at Mount Airy, I have succeeded with great patience and with the enticing power of the peanut, in getting a gray-crested titmouse to light on my hand, and to take a peanut from between my lips. And I persuaded a nuthatch to come within a foot of my chair. The titmouse knew me so well that when I was several hundred yards from the house it flew down from a tall tree and took a peanut from my hand. This was in the season when food was plentiful.
As an agriculturist as well as naturalist I have been always interested in the insectivorous birds as a great aid to man in the destruction of insects. I know of no bird that does not eat insects, except the goldfinch. I remember once examining the stomach of an American swift, it contained a mass of insects, six hundred and fifty mosquitoes and gnats which had been caught on the wing that day. Especially valuable is the purple martin because he can be attracted to our fields and orchards if the proper kind of house is made for him. He arrives from the tropics very early in time to meet the first flight of many noxious insects such as the cuculio which is so destructive to the peach and similar fruits.
When I built for irrigation my reservoir holding four hundred thousand gallons, I was afraid that it would be a great breeding place for mosquitoes. I placed around the reservoir boxes and gourds on poles as homes for the purple martin, so that the birds would destroy the mosquitoes. At the same time I had put in the water small fish to eat the wiggletails, the larvæ of the mosquito. The fish and martins have largely eradicated this noxious insect from the plantations.[1]
[1] Acknowledgment of Mr. Fort's observations on mosquitoes has been made in The Mosquitoes of North and Central America and West Indies, pages 178, 403, vol. i. Authors: Leland O. Howard, Harrison G. Dyar, Frederick Knabe.
At the present time the boll weevil has made its appearance in most of the cotton fields in southwest and middle Georgia. I believe that the ravages of the weevil cannot be stopped, but they can be checked and reduced to a minimum. In studying the history of this insect, I find that it is food for birds of the class hirundo, or swallow. When the boll weevil, which is one of cuculio, makes its first flight over the cotton fields before depositing its eggs in the cotton squares is the time that it is caught by the swallows and martins. The weevil is slow in flight and easily caught. If the first brood is caught it will decrease them by the million, as it has been calculated that the progeny of one female, if not destroyed, would by the end of the season be two million. I have had placed around my cotton fields forty martin boxes. I am confident that these birds will greatly lessen the depredation of the boll weevil in my fields. As the martin returns every year to the same home, each year I hope to have a larger colony.
We must protect the birds. A great French savant has said that in seven years, without the help of insectivorous birds, the world would become uninhabitable by man. The destruction of insects is greatest during the nesting season of the birds, as a young bird is a small mill continually grinding up insects. Birds should have our special protection at that season. A young bird just off the nest is a prey to almost everything; cats, hawks, snakes, are among its principal enemies. The wanton destruction of bird life by man has so decreased them that it threatens the world with a great calamity. We must teach the young generation to refrain from this destructive work, and that the birds are our useful friends. Teach them to love the birds, to admire their plumage and song, to study their habits, and to realize that they contemplate the work of a munificent Creator who has fashioned these beautiful inhabitants of the air.