Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 209, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1916 — Page 2

HAWKS of BAD CHARACTER

7 • “I T IS an easy task, but not altogether a congenial one, to write about the hawks of America iu whose fives the evil outweighs the good. When one sets down black marks : against a bird's character he invites death for the bird, and this is not a pleasant thing to do for one who believes that the interest which a bird of evil disposition adds to the general scheme of life ought to be sufficient to save the species from extermination, even if it dearly loves a chicken for dinner and a song bird for breakfast. If is easy to write about the injurious hawks of this country because there are so few of them. Most of our birds of prey, the hawks and the owls, do more good than harm. There are only a scant half dozen or so into whom nature has implanted the desire for evil deeds. Nature is supposed to do everything, or at any rate almost everything, well and so ffTnay be thair if we kill the bold buccaneer birds who do a bit of thieving now and then, we may rue it one day for some reason not yet disclosed to the human mind. ’ The scientists tell us that perhaps the two most injurious hawks in America are the sharp-shinned and the cooper hawks. These two birds do a large jpart of the thieving which the farmers of the. country lay at the door of the soaring hawk, the red-tailed, the red-shouldered, and some "others. i ~ The sharp-shinned gentleman, called Aceipiter velox, by the ornithologists, is, as somebody has put it, “a brute of a bird.” Vernon Bailey of the biological survey of the department of agriculture has written thus about this bird of more than questionable life: “Among the hawks, the sharpshinned is a veritable bushwhacker. His light body, short wings, and long tail enable him to double and turn among the brush and branches, and in a noiseless, foxlike way, pounce over a hedgerow or brush heap into the midst of a. flock; of sparrows, swoop under the low branches and pick his bird from the ground, or dart through the Ireetops and snatch one in midair from .the midst of a startled flock. His small size is so much more than compensated by his audacity that one bird often becomes the terror of the poultry yard, taking the small and lialf,grown chickens regularly, and sometimes killing and eating a fullgrown hen of many times its ownjveighL” I once saw a--sharp-shinned hawk swoop down into a flock of English

CONDENSATIONS

The annual cheese production of Canada amounts to 130,000,000 pounds, of which about one-half is made in Ontario. , A The United States produced 66.30 per cent of the 400,483,489 barrels of ipetroleum that entered the markets of the world In 1914 s The phrase “entente cordiale” was first used to the friendly relations exlstink between Fiance and JCnaiand. in 1843.

sparrows on one of (lie crowded corners of the city of Chicago. A trolley car was thundering along at the moment the sharp-sliinned mnde Its descent. It missed its prey, much to my disappointment, for I don’t like JSnglish sparrows, and I have a sneaking admiration for the bold bird which dares to make a try for its breakfast no matter what perils impend. The Cooper hawk, called by the scientists Aceipiter cooperii, is just as much of a villain, if you want to look at him that way.~&s is his brother Accipiter, surnained velox. This bird is just ns daring as the sharp-shinned, and being somewhat larger is able to attack successfully larger prey. Dr. A. K. Fisher, the foremost American authority on the birds of prey, has this to say about the freebooter under discussion : “Cooper's hawk, which resembles the sharp-shinned hawk closely in everything except size, is less northern in its- distribution. . . . The food of this hawk, like thaft of its smaller congener, consists almost entirely of wild birds and poultry, though from its superior size and strength it is able to cope successfully with much larger birds, and hence is much more “to be dreaded. . . . The flight of this species is very rapid, irregular, and usually is carried at no'great height from the ground, in all these particulars closely resembling that of the sharp-shinned hawk.” One of the most destructive of the American birds of prey is the goshawk, otherwise AccipWer atricapillus. The goshawk is a big bird, something more than a foot and a half in length, and seemingly it has the strength of —well we won’t say ten, but two. Its nesting place is either in the mountains or way up in the northern regions. It preys on game birds and rabbits in the summer season an<J in the winter it comes southward from its summer home to take its pick of the fut poultry of the land. The goshawk is a during and a hardy bird. It typifies the wild life of mountain and plain, and as such It seemingly might be allowed to keep its place in nature's plan, but sentiment usually is allowed to count for little when the loss of a prize rooster or lien is in the other side of the balance. -wNow we get away from the accipiters and get into the Genus Faleo. The duck hawk, Falsco peregrinus anaturn, is a true falcon. Florence Merriam Bailey, in her “Handbook of Birds of tiie Western United States,” says that the duck hawk ranks next to the goshawk as a fierce bird of prey. According to my way of looking at it, bad as the bird is, any man who shoots it ought to be shot himself. The duck 4iawk has that high courage which ought to appeal to everybody who has red blood iu him on his own account.

Flowers will turn to the light of the electric lamp just as they do to the Sun. ( \ A. 1 A solution of soft soap, instead of water, was used in making a waterproof concrete in building tiie foundations of a grain elevator on a river bank in Budapest. In granting concessions for development of its recently discovered potash deposits Spain is requiring concessionaries to reserve for national consumption silch parts of the salts as the government deems advisable.

THE EVENING REPUBLICAN,, RENSSELAER, INP.

Edward B. Clark tells -7 about those / birds of prey in ' America whose bad \ habits outweigh the good points. Sharpshinned and cooper hawks are the worst j \ culprits. Look out / -%v for them - A™* \ / PrtO/-l ■Ov >^PO)OLOCK\

The duck hawk flies as swift and as straight as the proverbial arrow. No poultry raiseEias any grudge against this falcon, for it disdains tame and humble quarry and fives like an epicure almost wholly upon game. The duck hawk will strike down in mid air a bird of twice its weight, and it will overtake the swiftest winged duck that flies. He is a pirate and everything else that is bad, but he lives the free and untrammeled life which nature taught him to live and so if it is necessary to kill something, fed and kill nature. There probably are no injurious hawks in the United States except those which have been named. Of course this qualified statement may be disputed, but for the most part our hawks are known to be largely beneficial and concerning those about which there is some doubt the, balance of good and evil seems to be just about even. The hawks that have been named and in part described are, as one might say, the worst of the bunch.

BEING. WELL IS AN ASSET

Physical Health Is Beginning to Be Recognized at Its Real Value to the Community. “Health insurance legislation will be introduced here very shortly If America as a progressive democracy is going to compete successfully in the world’s markets and at the same time conserve the stamina of her workers.” This opinion was expressed by Felix M. Warburg of the banking house of Kuhn, Loeb and company, brother of Paul M. Warburg of the federal reserve board. He was referring especially to the health insurance bill brought out by the American association for labor legislation this year. Mr. Warburg explains his interest in health insurance by Ills first-hand acquaintance with its working in Germany. “I lived in Germany at the time the law for health insurance was passed and put into operation and the effect from what I have been told has been excellent,” he said. “It is only by means of a system of universal health insurance that the service of advanced medical science can be brought to the cure of the workers as a whole, while at the same time 'the payment of joint contributions brings economic pressure to bear on the state, the employers and the worker himself “to prevent disease-. In other words, under health Insurance all parties concerned are made to feel the cash value of good health.”

A new French parachute to he carried on aeroplanes by aviators is forced to open by the explosion of a cartridge at the instant of its release

Locust beans are produced yearly to the extent of 30,000 tons. Impressment —the seizing of men for the British navy—was practiced for centuries, and did not become obsolete till just before the Crimean war. Sometimes the crews were taken from foreign ships on the higli seas. The death rate from cancer in Pennsylvania is said to be Increasing at a rate out of all proportion to the growth ia population. It is predicted that there will be 6,000 deaths from the disease in that state this year.

SAFETY IN TRAVEL

REMARKABLE IMPROVEMENT IN RAILROAD OPERATION. Few Casualty In 1915 Constitute a Wonderful Record—Number of Accidents Are Showing a Constantly Increasing Reduction. The annual bulletin concerning railway accidents hns been issued by the interstate commerce commission; and the great decrease in fatalities and accidents noted has Inspired much comment in engineering circles. It marks, says Ihe Railway Age Gazette, the greatest improvement in safety of railroad operation ever recorded in a single year.” Traffic was exceptionally light in 1915; hut the Gazette does not overlook the fact that the number of accidents is always roughly proportionate to the volume of business. The decrease is much greater than could be accounted for by the eurly industrial depression. *As the statisticians have put it: “The total number of passengers killed in 1915, 222, out of approximately a billion carried, was less than for any other year since 1898, when only 798,000,000 were carried; and the number injured was less than any other year since 1906. The total number of employees killed was less than for any other year since 1898, when there were only about one-half as many employees as in 1915, and the number injured was less than for any other year since 1911.” Moreover, during the last few months of 1915 there was a heavy increase in busines on all railroads, especially east of the Mississippi; yet there seems to have been only a slightly longer roster 'of accidents than usual in November and December. And government figures leave no doubt that the ratio of accidents to volume ( of business has been steadily reduced in the last decade. The form of transportation accident In which the railway Is essentially to blame Is the train accident. Crossing accidents and the killing of trespassers are seldom chargeable to the operating department of the railroad. And the lists of fatalities in train accidents, from the years 1910 to 1915, inclusive, show ft steady and most hopeful improvement. In 1910, 932 were killed; in 1911, 867; in 1912, 859; in 1913, 849; in 1914, 626; and in 1915, 410. Taking passengers alone, the reduction exhibits about the same steadiness, there being only one marked fluctuation upwards. In 1910, 421 were killed; in 1911, 356; in 1912, 318; in 1913, 403; in 1914, 265; and in 1915, 222. The total number of fatalities among employees shows also a fairly steady decrease, with a remarkable drop in the last two years. In 1910, 3,383 were killed; in 1911, 3,163; in 1912, 3,235; in 1913, 3,301; in 1914, 2,850; and in 1915, 1,809. These lists do not include those who came by their deaths in what are termed “industrial accidents.” There are recorded also parallel reductions in the number of injured among both passengers and employees, the total for 1915 having been less than 160,000. And it is well known that in the last few years the seriousness of the injuries to passengers, at least, has lessened. The crushing, the maiming, the burning that were almost commonplace in the days of wooden cars have given way, as the claims departments of the railways testify, to bruises, fractured bones, and nervous shock. All the factors that have operated to reduce the number of deaths have operated to reduce also the gravity of Injuries. A few of the larger eastern railways have been eminently successful in showing that, so far as passengers are concerned, safety- in railway management can be made almost an exact science.

Snake Stopped Express.

A large snake held up the Monon railroad’s fast passenger train, the Hoosier Limited, for ten minutes at Dyer, near Hammond. The snake, one of the largest ever seen in that vicinity, crawled into a switch box and cut off the electrical connection that made it possible to operate the switch from the interlocking tower. When the trainmen investigated they found the big snake fast In the switch. It had been stunned by the current and was easily killed. The snake, it is believed, crawled from the Kankakee swamp to the tracks and wriggled Its way Into the switch.—-Indian-apolis News.

First Railroad in America.

There is plenty of opportunity for controversy in the statement, made by the great-great-grandson of Thomas Leiper, which claims that the latter built the first railroad ever constructed in America. This was a short line, a tramway, in fact, built in 1810 at the Leiper quarries, near Chester. Pa. The next tramway to be built, according to this authority, was at Nashua, N. H„ in 1825. Then, it is now said, comes the railroad at Quincy, Mass., 1826-27. The fourth was the line at Mauch Chunk, Pa., built a little later, which, since It was no less than nine miles long, eclipsed all the others. —Christian Science Monitor.

Water 1 Railroads are among the largest users of water in the country. The fig* ures of C. R. Knowles, superintendent of the department of the 1111nfis Central railroad, place the dally water consumption at 1,950,000,000 gallons. at a dally expense of SIOO,OOO.

GREAT RECORD OF SAFETY

Railroad Has Right to Be Proud of the Achievement of lt» Highly Efficient Employee*. In 1915, the third successive year in which no passenger was killed in a train accident on the Pennsylvania railroad lines east of Pittsburgh and Erie, 4,364,519 tests and observations were made to determine how well the train operating rules and signals were being obeyed. These tests covered the work of both officers aud employees. The results, which have just been complied, show th&t only one error occurred in every 1,110 trials, giving a record of 99.9 per cent of absolute perfection. In four classes of tests, including obedience to various “stop” signals, not a single failure on the part of any employee occurred throughout the year. An exceptionally high record was made in the observance of rules intended especially for the protection of the employees. These included such matters as precautions in the shifting of trains and also the safety regulations governing men engaged (a track wprk. In the shifting of trains, 68,941 observations were mude and 17 errors recorded. There were 342,991 tests for obedience to the safety rules for track workmen and in 'only 78 cases were these rules disregarded in any way. That meant one error In every 4,690 trials. Last year, accidents to employees were reduced 11 per cent. Only eight failures to follow strictly the rules governing watchmen stationed at grade crossings occurred in the 62,934 instances which were observed last year.

BUILT FOR HEAVY TRAFFIC

Locomotives of Immense Power to Draw Trains Over Mountains In Southern States. Three locomotives which are said to be the largest ever used in the South \yere recently delivered to the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis railroad to pull heavy freight trains over Cumberland mountain between Nashville and Chattanooga. The engines are the same in class and size, each being an articulated compound of the r superheater type and weighing, with the tender, approximately 635,000 pounds. They have nearly three times the tractive power of the biggest locomotives previously used on the system. ( It is not iiJtended to put them in service on regular runs, but to use them chiefly at the mountain. They burn soft coal and have carrying capacity for 14 tons. In each case the wheel base of the engine and its tender is slightly less than 86 feet. The locomotives were taken to Atlanta, and In order to reach Chattanooga from there they had to be detoured by way of Birmingham so as to nvoid a tunnel which they were too broad to enter. —Popular Mechanics Magazine.

Coal Used by Railroads.

Writing In the Rock Island Employers’ Magazine recently, D. B. Sebastian discloses a number of Interesting facts regarding the huge coal consumption of this representative American railroad, as well as the vast opportunities for economy and careful methods of handling in this branch of railroading. He says that the Rock Island railroad annually requires approximately 100,000 cars of coal to operate its trains. The fuel hill for the year 1915 was $6,531,592. One shovelful of coal saved out of each ten shovelfuls, which Is not a difficult or Impossible achievement in view of the existing wasteful methods of firing locomotives, would effect an annual saving of $653,159.20 without impairing in any way the efficiency of the railroad.

Good Trade.

The Anthony . & Northern railroad recently bought four old passenger coaches from the Pennsylvania railroad. While overhauling the cars in the shops at Pratt it was discovered that the ballasting used under the floor of the car was of chunks and bars of babbitt metal instead of the customary short lengths of old railway steel. Before the war the metal was worth a half a cent a pound. Now it is quoted at 15 cents a pound and there are 30,000 pounds in the four cars, valued at about $5,000. or more than the cars cost the Anthony & Northern. The babbitt metal will be sold and steel used in the cars in its stead.—Kansas City Star.

Railroad Development.

Railroading is changing very rapidly and no prophet who Is wise will venture a prediction as to what the next development will be. In 1900 the average number of tons carried In one of our freight trains was 325, this year It Is 625. That seems to mean that we ffiave been able to build stronger cars and engines of greater power to haul them. What it really and principally means is that we have been able to and have been compelled to build better roadbeds, embankments, and bridges to carry the added load. ’

Street Cars.

In Germany even street cars are in nse as ambulances. Chpahle of carrying eight stretchers, these cars take the sufferers from the railroad station at Dusseldorf to the base ' hospitals In comparative ccanfort.

Protecting Lines From Floods. Chinese railroad embankments are protected from floods by planting them with a native grass with teuadoul roots that resist erosion.

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