The answer to this question needs to be presented from two distinctly different points of view—the commercial and the esthetic. In presenting the commercial point of view it will be necessary to ignore the use of any bird as an article of food, because we are now speaking of the living bird. Likewise it will be necessary to ignore the side which might be presented by the millinery trade, because that, too, has to do with the dead bird. We shall have occasion to present the general subject of the demands of fashion at a later time. This paper, then, is concerned only with our debt to the living bird.

In the June number of Birds and Nature some general remarks were made about what the birds eat. In this paper it will be necessary to go more into particulars in order to get clearly before us just wherein our debt lies.

First of all, we owe our physical comfort to the birds, because they check the increase in insect life. The mosquito and gnat, the horse fly and common housefly would soon rival the plagues of Egypt were the birds to disappear. If anyone doubts this let him go into the Cascade mountains where the scarcity of the birds gives great liberties to the "deer flies." And they take all liberties without so much as a "thank you, I guess I will!"

We owe our fruits largely to the birds. This statement anyone may prove by simple experiment. First drive the birds from your garden because you think they are eating the buds and blossoms, instead of the insects which sting the buds. You will be rewarded with a scanty and stunted fruit crop. Next conclude that you won't get fruit anyway, and so let the birds do as they please. You will be pretty sure to harvest a fairly good crop at least. Lastly, encourage the birds to visit your garden and orchard in their northward passage, as well as during the summer season. Build nesting boxes for the swallows, wrens and martins. Plant a mulberry tree for the fruit-loving robins and cat-birds. Now your fruit and garden are returning an abundant yield of the best grade. If the birds take a little for themselves have they not earned it? There is enough and to spare.

We owe corn and other grains largely to the birds, because they help to keep in check the insects which attack the cereals. During the grasshopper plagues very many birds feed upon the grasshoppers which do not usually touch grasshoppers. Probably chief among our grain field helpers is the Bronzed Grackle, who is so much in disfavor for the ravages he makes upon those same fields when the corn is in the roasting-ear stage. But he earns far more than he eats. The birds of prey destroy vast numbers of the little rodents which help themselves too freely to the planted grains.

We owe the preservation of the remnant of our forests, and all our trees and bushes largely to the birds who eat the insects which attack the trees and bushes. The woodpeckers are after the insect which is destroying the tree, not after the life of the tree.

Space would fail us to speak of the debt we owe to all the birds. There are the scavenger water-birds—gulls, terns and the like—the scavenger land birds—the vultures—the ducks, geese and swans, who check the encroachments of vegetable life upon our streams, ponds and lakes; the herons, cranes, rails, coots, gallinules and shore-birds, which feed upon the water and mud-inhabiting insects and other small animals; the sparrows and grouse, which destroy vast quantities of the seeds of harmful plants. In short, the only birds about whose usefulness there is any doubt are the English Sparrow, Crow, Blue Jay and four of the hawks. These are far too few for us to condemn all birds.

We cannot afford to overlook the esthetic side of this question. How much of our pleasure and happiness do we owe the birds directly for their intensely busy lives, the neatness and beauty of their dress, the perpetual joy of their songs? Can you imagine a world without birds? Are the returned warmth and the green vegetation all that make the summer months more pleasant than the winter season? Rob the tropics of their birds and you rob them of their heart. Pasadena, California, is a bird paradise, but take away its mocking birds, its orioles, its towhees, its gorgeous humming birds, and the many other birds which enliven every lawn, and you have taken away one of its chief charms.

But it is not simply that we are entertained by the birds, nor even that we are pleased with their neatness and beauty. Where their lives touch ours we feel an uplifting influence. We are better fitted for the service which it is our privilege to render to the world by the touch of the bird life. Our horizon is broadened beyond the self-interest, the egoistic, to the altruistic conception of life. We cannot live in the presence of these creatures so full of life without being spurred to more earnest effort ourselves. When we fail to see in the world of nature about us what it is our privilege to see we are losing that much of life. Let us open our eyes to all the influences that may shape our lives toward best living.

Lynds Jones.