concerning the habits of the common birds that dwell in and about the farmlands. The farmer knows now, if he never knew before, what birds to protect and what birds to shoot. He knows that there are so few of his feathered neighbors deserving of shooting that it is not necessary for him to load his gun oftener than once or twice a season.

The woodpecker (Colaptes auratus) ordinarily called the flicker, though it has thirty-six other local names, was for a long time on the farmer's proscribed list. It was hard for the husbandman to understand how any bird that pecked holes in trees could be otherwise than injurious. For years it did not occur to many farmers that the woodpeckers were seeking in the bark of the trees the insects which were destroying the tree's life. When

the bird drills a big hole in which to lay its eggs it almost invariably picks out a dead tree or a dead branch upon a living

tree.

The flicker seems to have departed from the ways of its remotely removed ancestors for it is no longer exclusively a bird of the trees. Fully one-half the time it seeks its food upon the ground where it destroys thousands upon thousands of ants, and shows also on occasion a marked appetite for grasshoppers. The Washington biologists examined the stomachs of two flickers and found them completely filled with ants, the stomach of one bird containing more than 3,000 of the insects. The flicker's tongue is particularly well adapted for the picking up of the inconsidered trifles of the insect world.

There are two species of American cuckoo, the yellow-billed cuckoo and the black-billed cuckoo. Unlike their English cousins the American cuckoos build nests of their own, and rear their own young. It is not probable that many persons outside of the ranks of the bird

students know the two American species apart. They are much alike in appearance, and their habits are almost identical. In the country districts the cuckoo is called the rain crow, because when it is heard to call, the current belief is that

ROBIN FEEDING ITS YOUNG.

a rainstorm will follow. The bird, however, is a poor prophet on many occasions. Through three weeks of dreadful drought in central Illinois I heard the cuckoos daily at their noisiest, and while my farmer friends said "Tomorrow it will surely rain" no rain came-and the cuckoos kept on calling.

Tent caterpillars, cankerworms, fall webworms, tussock moths and codling moths the Washington scientists tell us are among the worst enemies of the fruit grower. The cuckoos make war upon all these pests, in fact they prefer them to any other food. One cuckoo stomach that was examined contained 250 tent caterpillars, while in another stomach there were found 217 heads of the fall webworm. Many species of caterpillars are protected from the attacks of most birds by their hairy covering. In fact caterpillars of the hairy kind are practically immune from the attacks of all birds except the cuckoos, who for some reason best known to themselves, seem to prefer as a steady diet the repulsive creatures which no other bird of the for

est or field will so much as look at-a brave and commendable thing to do.

The cuckoo is a very wraith of a bird. It makes its way through the tree-tops like a ghost. There is something almost uncanny in its movements, but the fact only adds interest to its life. The farmers in many instances know the bird only as the poet knew the English cuckoo, as a "wandering voice."

The chipping sparrow is a bird of the farm-house door-yard. It is a mite of a creature, familiar in its habits and almost absolutely fearless of man. It builds its nest in the vine that clambers over the porch or in a low tree or a bush close to the path. The farmer has known the chipping sparrow for generations, and probably has loved it for its confidence in him, but doubtless he never has had a realizing sense of what the "chippy" has been doing for him. The bird is a

proof. If undisturbed it will become as familiar as the chipping sparrow. It is not at all unusual to find the bird's nest in the currant or raspberry bush of the garden. The song sparrow, however, is also a lover of the wild places and there are few Northern fields which have not one or two pairs of the songsters homesteading it for the summer.

The song sparrow is a seed eater, and the number of weed-seeds which it destroys in a season is almost incalculable. In some stomachs which the scientists examined there were more than 200 seeds each. When it is taken into consideration that digestion is a rapid process

great destroyer of the seeds of troublesome grasses, such as crab grass and pigeon grass and the species which are allied to them. During the fall months threefourths of the chipping sparrow's food supply is made up of the seeds of these plant pests.

The song sparrow is perhaps the only bird which sings every month of the year. Its cheerfulness is frost proof and heat

among birds, some understanding can be had of the value of the song sparrows to the agriculturist.

The sparrow family is a large one, for race-suicide has never entered into its calculations. The chipping sparrow and the song sparrow have cousins in scores the tree sparrows, the fox sparrows, the juncoes, the white-throats, the whitecrowns and so on through a long and honorable list of sparrow family names. They are humble birds, nearly all of whom dress in homespun, and most of whom have the song jewel in their throats. They are voracious seed-eaters and to their credit let it be said that they

confine the activities of their appetites to the seeds of the weeds that the farmer despises.

It is not necessary to introduce any body to the robin. The fruit-grower does not love the robin any too well, but the bird in the early spring does something to make the fruit possible. At this season the robin lives almost entirely upon insects, and it does not neglect the insects whose particular prey is the fruit tree. Later in the season the robin eats quantities of fruit, but it prefers the wild fruit to the cultivated varieties, and the man who has forethought enough to plant a few wild fruit trees about his fields will be fairly safe from loss. The robin, however, has so made his way into the hearts of the people of the North that they look upon his thieving with something like tolerance. Where the bird needs protection is in the South where it is shot in the winter time to make potpies for all the hotels from Palm Beach to western Texas.

The brown thrasher is almost univer

sally called the brown thrush, though it is not a thrush at all. It is one of the finest singers of the whole tribe of American birds. There is not a farmer in the land who has not stopped his plow horses on an April morning to stand to listen to the thrasher's music as it came from the top of the osage orange or the hawthorn at the field's edge. The thrasher's song earns him all the fruit that he takes, and if the song is not enough to give him the right to forage on the farmer's preserves, his habit of insect destroying would make him a paying guest.

The owl has been a sort of an outcast among the birds from the time that birds first were. Superstitions have clustered about the owl because of its night prowling habits. The little screech owl (Megascops asio) is one of the most widely distributed of the owl family. The farmer probably knows it well by sight and it is probable, also, that by this time he knows its value to him as a protector of his crops. It destroys great numbers of mice and thousands upon thousands of

insects every season, thus proving itself one of the farmer's best friends.

Why the screech owl is so called no one knows, for its note, so far from being a screech, is a sort of a tremulous whistling murmur, nothing uncanny and nothing unpleasant. The barn owl "who doth to the moon complain" is, taking everything into consideration, probably the most useful of American birds, and yet everywhere it is shot on sight. A pair of barn owls will rid a farm of rats in a single season and will then go to the

adjoining farm to perform a like service.

In recent years the students of bird life have multiplied amazingly. The people have found out the real living interest that there is in the pursuit of the feathered ones with no weapon more harmful than an opera-glass. The farmers' institutes have taken up the subject of the study of birds in their relation to agriculture, and the study has made for the protection of birds that for years untold were looked upon almost wholly as workers of injury to the industries of the field.

-SCOTT.

RUGGING 'em to death! Sending through the side of a ship a shell that is loaded with a powerful anesthetic, putting the men who run the engines of the warship to sleep and rendering the giant citadel the veriest pigmy for capture!

"Bosh!" you say, as you shake with mirth at what you regard as the comically ridiculous.

Let us reflect, however. They laughed at the idea of the "Monitor" warship. Nevertheless, that tiny twisting-turret thing revolutionized the mode of naval warfare. It was the same with the machine-gun and Holland's submarine. A foreign power had first to buy and try in order that the United States might trail along and finally believe in and build the war contrivance of one of its own citizens. Sneering and laughter have little to do with determining the merit of an invention.

Carl M. Wheaton, of Newtonville, Mass., an inventor of several much-used machines, has been at work nine years in evolving a submarine that throws a shell filled with a non-explosive, sleepinducing drug. His scheme has been exhaustively gone over by some of the most important scientific and naval men in the world, and they-indorse it! And at the moment of writing, a foreign government is negotiating to get control of the invention.

Here is what George F. F. Wilde, Rear Admiral in the United States Navy, says, under date of June 20, 1907:

"I'm convinced that his scheme is a thoroughly practical one, though on the surface it may seem chimerical, simply because it's outside the ordinary run of things."

Prof. Amos Dolbear, of Tufts College, a world-celebrated scientist, says

Wheaton's scheme "is in accord with correct scientific principles."

W. Starling Burgess, the yacht designer and naval architect, is another expert who pronounces the project practicable. A former chief of the Board of Engineers, U. S. A., is another who supports the idea.

The famous stinkpot of the Chinese has been obsolete for centuries. Nevertheless, that principle is a striking feature of the Wheaton method of warfare. The anesthetic which he uses is, as is his model, of course, being kept a profound secret. Its smell, to the layman, suggests a liberal proportion of chloroform. Its action is instant sleep, but it is not fatal unless the victim be deprived of air.

Wheaton proposes building submarines in groups of six, each of the vessels costing $200,000. Each carries a tank capable of standing a pressure of five hundred.