Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 134, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1916 — Page 3

EMINENT American ornithologist rexi cently was asked to name the ten taost 1 beneficial birds of the United States. V I Here is his answer: Nlghthawk, killrtf' rj deer plover, chimney swift, bluebird, wLa 1 downy woodpecker, phoebe, chickadee, gSC A barn swallow, purple martin and chipJ ping sparrow. —' Having given the names of the ten 4 birds over whose good deeds man should rejoice the ornithologist said, “But the list is longer. There are other birds and many of them, that work as hard or nearly as hard for man as those which I have named. Between 80 and 40 species there is small room for choice, but let the ten stand because the list perhaps cannot be improved upon.” Later the. scientist wanted to hedge .a little, for he said that there were some birds of prey which at least should have a place side by side with the familiars of orchard and garden to which he had given first rank. The cause of the birds of prey, however, has been pleaded before. The barn owl, the sparrow hawk and some others have been given their credit marks, but it is to be doubted, perhaps, if anything which can be said in behalf of a predatory one which occasionally picks up a chicken will serve to save its life when it is caught in the act of larceny. Not one of the birds in the Table of Ten is a thief. Honest, well-meaning, cheerful, and for the most part neighborly, they go through their lives working, which means eating, in order that man more fully may Heap what he has sown. It is admittedly probable that some close students of the habits of birds may dispute the accuracy of the list as it is given, but it is not likely that anyone who has watched the daily operations of these friends in feathers from nighthawk to chipping sparrow will be able to prove that so much as one black mark should be entered on the daily records of their lives. By their appetites ye shall know them. A bird is good or bad from the agriculturists’ viewpoint according to what and how much it eats. This is a plain tale of the birds’ bill of fare. It is lucky, perhaps, for the songsters, as well as for the tuneless ones, that the birds of the best habits of life are well known by sight to all Americans. The trouble that the bird protectors have found lies almost wholly in the fact that the habits of birds are not as well known as the birds themselves. It was Dr. A. K.- Fisher of the Biological Survey who named the ten most useful birds. He is in charge of “economic investigations” in the Bureau of the Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture. In the bureau are kept the bird records. The papers in the pigeon holes in part read like the catalogues of a seed store and the collection lists of an entomologist. One can say 4 of the birds that seeds and insects “form the chief of their diet.” To go to the mammals for a figure of speech It has taken years of closest work and field work to separate the sheep from the goats. In the bird world there are many more sheep than there are goats, but the job of separation has been hard. In the little flock of best friends of the farmer there are only two birds which, perhaps, are not well known to all suburban dwellers. The two are the killdeer plover and the yellow-billed cuckoo. The nlghthawk, which heads the list, is, or ought to be, known to everybody. Of course it is not a hawk at all, and the name by which it Is known in the Northern states, has hurt it. Paraphrasing it might be said, “Give a bird a bad name and it will shoot It.” In the Southern states the nlghthawk is known as the bull-bat. In the fall and winter it is killed ruthlessly and to no purpose except that of so-called sport, for It Is useless, or virtually useless as food. Nighthawks are wholly insectivorous. They do no damage to crops. F. E. L. Beal, who has made field studies for the Biological Survey of the dietary of virtually all the commoner birds, says of the food of the nlghthawk, “True bugs, moths, flies, grasshoppers and crickets are important elements of its food. Several species of mosquitoes, including the transmitter of malaria, are eaten. Other well-known pests consumed by the nlghthawk are Colorado potato beetles, cucumber beetles, rice, clover-leaf fc«L_cottohboll weevils, bill bugs, bark beetles, squash- bugs and moths of the cotton worm.” The killdeer plover is one of the noisy birds. A part of its Latin name is "Vociferus,” which speaks for itself. While the killdeer ordinarily 1s accounted a game bird it is poor eating. The good that it does should save It from persecution, but gunners are not apt to discriminate, and so the killdeer frequently suffers. This bird lives in .the open country. More than 99 per cent of its food consists of animal matter. The record shows: Beetles, 37.06 per cent; other insects, as grasshoppers, caterpillars, ants, bugs, caddis flies, dragon flies and two-winged flies, 89.64 per cent, and other Invertebrates as centipedes, spiders, ticks, oyster worms, earthworms, snails, crabs and other Crustacea, 21.11 T-per cent. Vegetable matter composes 2.28 per cent of the total food, and is chiefly made up of weedpeeds, such as buttonweed, smart weed, foxtail grass and nightshade. The alfalfa'weevil, a hew and de-

THE FARMER'S TEN BEST BIRO FRIENOS

They are the night hawk, killdeer plover, chimney swift, bluebird, downy woodpecker, phoebe,chickadee, bam swallow, purple martin and chipping sparrow

By Edward B. Clark

structlve pest, has been proved to be a favorite food for the killdeer. The chimney swift, almost always called the chimney swallow, although It Is not a swallow at all, is sometimes looked upon as a nuisance because In the summer time it Is apt to make less of a racket in the chimneys leading from bedrooms In which tired folk are trying to sleep. This swift-winged bird never lights upon the ground, a tree or a building. Its only resting place is on sooty bricks in the dark interior of a chimney or on the inner wood of some hollow tree in a wilderness that knows no chimney. All of the swift’s food Is captured on the wing. It eats thousands of mosquitoes, gnats and other noxious winged Insects. It hunts from daylight to dark, and all Its hunting is in the interest of man. The swift gathers Its nesting material while on the wing. It has a curious habit, while in flight, of nipping off the tips of dead twigs, and so quickly and neatly is the thing done that the eye barely can follow the operation. The bluebird, with its “violet of song” Is loved , wherever it Is known. Luckily bluebirds are prolific creatures, for about twenty years ago a severely cold winter made such inroads on the tribe that It was feared the birds might never come back into their own. They, came back, and now there are as many as ever and they are continuing a warfare against man's enemies with no pacificist in the land to interpose objection. The bluebird is given third place in the list of the ten most beneficent birds. Science is cruel In order to be kind. Nearly nine hundred bluebirds met death so that the scientists might prove that they were useful to man. An examination of the stomachs of the martyrs showed that 68 per cent of the food “consists of Insects and their allies, while the other 32 per cent is made up of various vegetable substances found mostly in the stomachs of birds taken In winter.” It Is a happy thing for the bluebird that the scientists are able to set It down that “so far as its vegetable food is concerned the bird is positively harmless.” The bluebird is a beauty. It is neighborly and kindly disposed. Its appealing spring-time note sounds far away, for the bluebird is a ventriloquist. It perches in a tree at the doorstep, but seemingly calls to you from the skies. The downy woodpecker is the tiniest member of the woodpecker family which spreads itself pretty well over the United States. The downy eats everything In the bug and Insect line from tiny ants to big caterpillars. Frequently these little woodpeckers are shot by orchardists because they appear to be injuring the trees. This is what Dr. Glover, an the Department of Agriculture, has said concerning this matter of suspicion: “On one occasion a downy woodpecker was observed making a number of small, roughedged perforations in the bark of a young shade tre§. Upon examining the tree when the bird had flown away, it was found' that wherever the bark had been injured the young larv&e, of the wood-eating beetles had been snugly coiled underneath and had been destroyed by the birds. The hairy woodpecker, a bigger brother of the downy, also ,1s a beneficent bird, but the lijtlo one rather outdoes the big one in the work of welldoing. ■* The phoebe is the true harbinger of spring, even if the robin and the bluebird more frequently are given the honor. The phoebe belongs to the tribe of flycatchers and It takes virtually all of its food on the wing. It cannot come north until spring comes as Its companion, because Its food does no* 4 fly about In cold weather. I have seen four young phoebes sitting side by side on the limb of a tree while the mother bird for two hours struck down quarry with which to feed them. Not a mistake did she make, and she played no favorites. Out from the limb she would dart, there would be a click of the bill and an insect tidbit ppnld be fed to one- of the fledglings. The young were fed one- after another, the mother bird apparently remembering which one had been given the last mouthful. F. E. L. Beal of the Biological Survey says all that is necessary to prove the phoebe’s case: “There are but few birds in the United States more endeared to the rural and village population than the common phoebe. Its habit of associating Itself with man and his - works, its trustful disposition and the fact that it never Is seen to prey upon any product of husbandry have rendered it almost sacred.” >-

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN, RENSSELAER, IND.

/’YfOTOcfifiPM mon u. s. a/OLOC/CAL JURV£Y

The chickadee appealed to Ralph Waldo Emer son. The bird has a philosophy of its own and Emerson recognized it. It stays in the north country all winter, for no cold can shackle its activities nor chill its cheer. Emerson met the chickadee on a blustery winter day and wrote: Here was this atom in full breath Hurling defiance at vast death; This scrap of valor just for play Fronts the north wind in waistcoat gray. A favorite food of the chickadee consists of the eggs of the two species of tent caterpillar moths which are among the most destructive of insects. In winter it eats larvae, chrysalids and eggs of moths, varied by a few seeds. The bird’s bill of fare is made up for the main part of insects, nearly all of which are known to the farmer or fruit raiser as pests. The barn swallow and the purple grackle, cousin swallows, are familiar to all dwellers in the country. There are five other pmmon species of swallows found within the United States and all of them are of beneficent life. Swallows take all of their food, or nearly all of it, while on the wing. Virtually all of the insects which they destroy are either Injurious or annoying, and the government scientists Bay that the numbers of the pests “destroyed by swallows are not only beyond calculation, but almost beyond imagination.” Wordsworth might have asked the American cuckoo, as he did its European cousin, whether he should call It a bird or but a wandering voice. There are two fairly abundant species of cuckoos In America, the yellow-billed and the black-billed. Their habits are much alike. These two birds are ventriloquists. One hears their voices where they are not The cuckoos thread their way through the tangles of branches, gliding after the manner of ghosts. The bird eats what most other birds disdain. It has a special fondness for the great hairy destructive caterpillars, and when it finds a nest of the tent caterpillars It will not move on until the destruction of the pests and their home is complete. The cuckoo frequently Is called the rain crow. It has no place as a weather prophet, however, for it Is apt to be especially vociferous In the dryest times. In the list of the ten best birds there is only one bird of the dooryard. These little birds nest in the currant bushes, in the vines which clamber over the porch or In the hedges which bound the dooryard domain. Sparrows are known as seed eaters, and this might carry an implication that they are destroyers of grain. Some of them are, but we have the scientists as witnesses that the food habits of the chipping sparrow, the bird which comes to your doorstep for crumbs, are all good. It* has been written of it that it is “well worthy of the welcome and protection which it everywhere receives." It must not be thought because ten birds have been named as the best friends of the -farmer •that there are not scores of others whose daily work is for the good of man. The ten excel, but the others strive with them throughout their short lives to work as well as In them lies for the good of man who too often, misunderstanding their intentions, becomes their persecutor.

SAFE FROM BARBED WIRE.

One of the most trying tasks incident to trench fighting has been considerably lightened by the appearance in the British trenches of gloves made of a fabric which is said to be impervious to barbed wire points, says Popular Science Monthly. The fabric is made up into mittens, with the first finger and thumb separate. The fabric Is waterproof, and in addition the gloves are insulated for gripping electrically charged wires. The same material is. applied to the manufacture of, sleeping bags, which, when opened, may be thrown over a barbed wire entanglement to allow a soldier to climb over the sharp points without Injury. When made up Into vests or tunics the fabric is strong enough to turn shrapnel splinters of even a bullet when it has iost part of Its momentum. The Interlining Is antisepticized, so that if a bullet goes through it takes Into the wound enough antiseptic wool to prevent poisoning. * . The materials used in the manufacture of this remarkable fabric have been sedulously kept secret this far.

ALL USING TAFFETA

All the leading dressmakers are using quantities of plain and shot taffeta. This silk is now produced in specially soft qualities and in the loveliest colors it is possible to imagine. Ra-ven’s-wing-blue taffeta is in great demand for Afternoon gowns and this silk is successfully combined with a thin make of cloth, or with crepe de chine, writes the Paris correspondent of the Boston Globe. For visiting dresses taffeta is combined with fine serge, with waistcoats of beautiful bead and silk embroidery cleverly introduced. For mourning dresses —of which we have now such a need in France—

Dance Frock for a Young Girl of Shell Pink Silk Gauze With Roses Made of Black Velvet Ribbon and Sliver Leaves. black taffeta Is combined with black crepe de chine or black silk gauze. The bridge teas at the Ritz are exceedingly fashionable. These teas are given for the benefit of a very Important ambulance fund, and they have proved an unqualified success. Recently I noticed a number of well-known society women : at the crowded tables, and some really beautiful dresses were worn. A very pretty girl wore a rather remarkable frock which was composed entirely of dark blue taffeta dotted all over with bright red spots. The full skirt was trimmed with a number of narrow flounces, arranged in Vandykes, and the corsage was tight and high-waisted. There was a demure little collar —almost Quaker in outline—made of white organdie muslin and very long suede gloves met the skimpy sleeves which failed to reach the elbows. With this dress a picturesque hat made of dark blue satin straw was worn. The wide brim of this hat dropped slightly at the sides and the high crown was circled by a thick wreath of shaded roses and blackberry brambles. Doucet is just now making a great many dinner gowns of black and darlf prune panne. He is introducing very lovely embroideries, in which silver threads, Jtay porcelain beads and pas-tel-tinted silks play leading roles. These gowns are intended for matrons and almost all of them have pointed trains which fall in a sort of fishtail over a full petticoat. This Is a revival of an old-world fashion and it is distinctly effective when worn by the right woman, but these fishtail trains demand dignity from their wearers. They must not be swished about, 'here and there, without some reason.

FOOT-REST ALWAYS HANDY

Two or Three of Them in the Living Rooms Are Now Considered Almost Indispensable. The foot-rest shown In the accompanying sketch can be made by the amateur without fear of failure, at a

Useful Foot-Rest.

cost, at the most, of less than a dollar, should all the materials for it have to be purchased, which is scarcely likely to be the case. To make it: in the first place procure a strong packing case, with a lid well hinged on, measuring about 18 eighteen inches each way and the same measurement in height. Line the inside of the box with brown paper, as it will prove useful for storing all kinds of odds and ends, and underneath the box, at each corner-, screw on casters. Cover the sides with some pretty cretonne; this can be done by turning the material over at the edges and underneath, and fastening it on with tacks. . « The edges of the lid are ffexl finished off with ornamental braid and

brass-headed nails driven in close together. A cushion is fastened upon the top of-the box; a cheap cushion covered with cretonne and of the size required can be purchased for a small sum, and may be secured in place with tiny black tacks run through at each corner, and at the sides and into the lid of the box. To facilitate moving it about, brass handles can be screwed on at the sides of the box it desired.

GOOD USE FOR DRAIN PIPE

With Proper Decoration It Can Be Made Into Useful and Ornamental Umbrella Stand. Drain pipes make most excellent stands for sticks, umbrellas, golf clubs, plants, brooms, etc., It Is Impossible to knock them over, and If treated to a little simple decoration, they become ornamental as well as useful. These pipes can usually be had from builders, or at any place where building is going on several are sure to be left over, and they can be bought very cheaply. The pipe will need covering all over with some enamel, paint or paper. Some very good effects can be got by covering the pipe over with leftover paper; thick paper would be suitable for the purpose, such as embossed paper that is used for halls or for ceilings. If the pipe Is only to stand In a pantry as a receptacle for brooms, it could be covered with almost any kind of left-over wall paper. As a rule, the best plan is to enamel the pipe; give one coat, let that dry, then give another, or paint it with a paint that varnishes at the same time. Such paint can be had in all artlstio shades of color; the tone, of course, will depend upon the surrounding decorations. Leave it to dry for several days; it can then be decorated a little further. For this purpose it is a good plan to stencil a simple pattern round the top and bottom of It with another color; this can be done with ordinary oil paint or gold or silver paint. It is a matter of only a few minutes to paint the stencil on the pipe, and the effect is very good. For those who paint, a few flowers arranged gracefully round the pipe look very pretty, or a little scene. When the pipes are used as plant stands, they should be painted or

Firm Umbrella Stand.

enameled the same shade as the plant pot; this gives a complete look to the stand. The stencil or other decoration on the pipe may be another color, but all should harmonize together.

Color on Dark Gowns.

Bright-colored embroideries on darkcolored gowns have been shown in New York lately. A smart street gown seen at an opening was of navy blue serge with embroidery in bright red. The embroidery takes the form of a narrow border finishing the edges of the overskirt, the girdle, the collar and the cuffs, etc. It is simple in design, but It is the color effect that is sought rather than detail. Hand embroideries of such sort are being largely used, and New York tailors are using stitching of novel sort. The machine is threaded with heavy floss in a desired color and rows of stitching are used as finish. At a glance it loofcs like a silk cord applied. It is effective ip,spite of its simplicity.

Care of the Hair.

When one has a resting time forced upon her is the psychological moment to get busy with the hair. Every woman knows the benefits of tonic treatments, but every woman knows equally well what a sight she Is during the process’ Therefore, instead of bemoaning when the baby gets the measles, or Ruth or Bob. comes down with chickenpox, shutting one In the bouse, the opportunity to strengthen your locks. You can even resort to crude petroleum without afflicting callers. Separate the hair into strands and apply tonics nightly without fear of flattening; rub in vaseline often, and let the hair hang, for ventilation.

New Coating.

Golf cords is the material of a new sport coating and it comes in threecolor stripes or rather three shades of the same color.