Of grasshoppers, 84; chinch bugs, 100; squash bugs, 12; army worm, 12; cut-worm, 12; mosquitoes, 568 in three hours; cotton boll weevil, 47; flies, 1,350; rose slugs, 1,286. Miscellaneous insects consumed by a laying hen quail, 1,532, of which 1,000 were grasshoppers; total weigh of the lot, 24.6 grams.
"F.M. Howard, of Beeville, Texas, wrote to the U.S. Bureau of Entomology, that the bob whites shot in his vicinity had their crops filled with the weevils. Another farmer reported his cotton fields full of quail, and an entire absence of weevils." Texas and Georgia papers (please copy.)
And yet, because of its few pitiful ounces of flesh, two million gunners and ten thousand lawmakers think of the quail only as a bird that can be shot and eaten! Throughout a great portion of its former range, including New York and New Jersey, the species is surely and certainly on the verge of total extinction. And yet sportsmen gravely discuss the "bag limit," and "enforcement of the bag-limit law" as a means of bringing back this almost vanished species! Such folly in grown men is very trying.
To my friend, the Epicure:—The next time you regale a good appetite with blue points, terrapin stew, filet of sole and saddle of mutton, touched up here and there with the high lights of rare old sherry, rich claret and dry monopole, pause as the dead quail is laid before you, on a funeral pyre of toast, and consider this: "Here lies the charred remains of the Farmer's Ally and Friend, poor Bob White. In life he devoured 145 different kinds of bad insects, and the seeds of 129 anathema weeds. For the smaller pests of the farm, he was the most [ ] marvelous engine of destruction that God ever put together of flesh and blood. He was good, beautiful and true; and his small life was blameless. And here he lies, dead; snatched away from his field of labor, and destroyed, in order that I may be tempted to dine three minutes longer, after I have already eaten to satiety."
Then go on, and finish Bob White.
The Case Of The Robin. —For a long time this bird has been slaughtered in the South for food, regardless of the agricultural interests of the North. No Southern gentleman ever shoots robins, or song birds of any kind, but the negroes and poor whites do it. The worst case of recent occurrence was the slaughter in the town of Pittsboro, North Carolina.
It was in January, 1912. The Mayor of the town, Hon. Bennet Nooe, was away from home; and during a heavy fall of snow "the robins came into the town in great numbers to feed upon the berries of the cedar trees. In order that the birds might be killed without restriction, the Board of Aldermen suspended the ordinance against the firing of guns in the town, and permitted the inhabitants to kill the robins."
A disgraceful carnival of slaughter immediately followed in which "about all the male population" participated. Regarding this, Mayor Nooe later on wrote to the editor of Bird Lore as follows:
"Hearing of this, on my return, I went to the Aldermen, all of whom were guilty, and told them that they and all others who were guilty would have to be fined. Three out of the five submitted and paid up, but they insisted that the ordinance be changed to read exactly as it is written here, with the exception that all could shoot robins in the town until the first of March; whereupon I resigned, as was stated."—(Bird Lore, XIV, 2. p. 140.)
The Mayor was quite right. The robin butchers of Pittsboro were not worthy to be governed by him.