rowers. It should be greatly reduced in numbers. Another
California bird that has gained a bad reputation is the house finch or
linnet. It does serious harm in the cherry and apricot orchards, not so
much by eating as by pecking at the fruit. It probably pecks, and thus
destroys, five times as much fruit as it eats. As the bird is very
abundant, it sometimes causes the loss of almost the entire crop of a
small fruit grower. It does not deserve protection, for it eats the buds
and blossoms of fruit trees and does little to compensate for all the
harm done. Its best habit is eating woolly plant-lice.

No article on birds would be complete that does not dwell on the
enormous destruction of birds for trimming hats. As one writer puts it,
we pay eight hundred million dollars a year for hat trimmings, assuming
the insect ravages to be due to the killing of our birds for millinery
purposes. While this is exaggerated, it is undoubtedly true that this is
the largest cause of the destruction of the birds of America.

The Audubon society says that we, as a nation, use 150,000,000 birds a
year for trimming hats alone and that this single item would save our
crops from insect destruction and largely rid our fields of weeds.

If a few hundred dollars are stolen from a bank, the greatest efforts
are made to catch the thief, and if possible to get the money back; but
the great army of insects destroy each year, almost as much in money
value as all the national banks in the country have on deposit, and this
wholesale destruction might largely be prevented if every woman and girl
took (and kept) a pledge not to use wings, breasts, or birds on her
hats. There is no objection to the use of ostrich feathers, which are
carefully plucked from the live birds. The feathers grow again, just as
the wool grows on sheep that have been sheared. Neither is there any
objection to using the feathers of the barn-yard fowls which are killed
for food.

Only a little less is the loss caused by so-called "sportsmen," men who
kill only for the pleasure of shooting, or who, because they like the
taste of quail, shoot as many as they can in a day instead of only
enough to satisfy hunger. Often a farmer sells for a very small amount
the privilege of hunting on his farm, thinking he is making money when
in fact he is losing ten dollars for every one he makes.

The quail, sparrows and other birds on the farm are destroyed. As a
result the weed seeds are not e