uch slaughter is prevented by the attachment
of small tags or discs to the telephone wires, at intervals of a few
rods, sufficiently near that they attract the attention of flying birds,
and reveal the line of an obstruction. This system should be adopted in
all regions where the conditions are such that birds kill themselves
against telegraph wires, and an excellent place to begin would be along
the line of the N.Y., N.H. & H. Railway.

WILD ANIMALS.--Beyond question, it is both desirable and necessary that
any excess of wild animals that prey upon our grouse, quail, pheasants,
woodcock, snipe, mallard duck, shore birds and other species that nest
on the ground, should be killed. Since we must choose between the two,
the birds have it! Weasels and foxes and skunks are interesting, and
they do much to promote the hilarity of life in rural districts, but
they do not destroy insects, and are of comparatively little value as
destroyers of the noxious rodents that prey upon farm crops. While a few
persons may dispute the second half of this proposition, the burden of
proof that my view is wrong will rest upon them; and having spent
eighteen years "on the farm," I think I am right. If there is any
positive evidence tending to prove that the small carnivores that we
class as "vermin" are industrious and persistent destroyers of noxious
rodents--pocket gophers, moles, field-mice and rats--or that they do not
kill wild birds numerously, now is the time to produce it, because the
tide of public sentiment is strongly setting against the weasels, mink,
foxes and skunks. (Once upon a time, a shrewd young man in the
Zoological Park discovered a weasel hiding behind a stone while
devouring a sparrow that it had just caught and killed. He stalked it
successfully, seized it in his bare hand, and, even though bitten, made
good the capture.)

The State of Pennsylvania is extensively wooded, with forests and with
brush which affords excellent home quarters and breeding grounds for
mammalian "vermin." The small predatory mammals are so seriously
destructive to ruffed grouse and other ground birds that the State Game
Commission is greatly concerned. When the hunter's license law is
enacted, as it very surely will be at the next session of the
legislature (1913), a portion of the $70,000 that it will produce each
year will be used by the commission in paying bounties on the
destruction of the surplus of vermin. Through the pursuit of vermin