BRINGING BACK THE SONG BIRDS How can boys and girls bring back our song birds? I will not say much about why we want them, for in enlightened America we take it for granted. Some people still want to be convinced that birds are of practical value. I will say only that the damage to crops by insects in nineteen hundred and four, is estimated at nine hundred and seventy-five million dollars. Investigations by scientists in state and nation all go to prove that a vast percentage of this loss could have been saved by birds. I wish every child would be ambitious to increase the bird life on every farm, on every village block. Here are some facts that ought to be convincing. I take them at random from my notes: Kingbirds kill bot-flies. Brown thrashers feed mostly on insects, especially white grubs and curculios. Cat-birds, cuckoos and orioles are very important enemies of gypsy moth. The red-eyed vireos are "premium caterpillar hunters." Bluebirds board themselves. Eat cut-worms, furry caterpillars, and grasshoppers. Wrens' food is ninety-eight per cent. animal matter. Warblers, titmice, creepers, and nut hatches eat lice. A pair of robins fed their nestlings this menu in three hours, bringing food every three minutes: sixty-one earth-worms, sixteen yellow grubs, thirty-eight other insects. Also four grasshoppers, several dragon flies, and a few moths. Robins rank first as enemies of white grub. Kingbirds protect poultry by driving away hawks; ninety-eight per cent. of their food is insects, mostly injurious sorts. Woodpeckers destroy grubs in living trees. Phoebes catch flies, lighting on backs of cattle so as to be handy; also elm-leaf beetle, adults of canker-worms, cut-worms and gypsy. Baltimore orioles are worth their weight in gold as destroyers of gypsy and brown-tail moths. Rose-breasted grosbeaks cleaned out potato beetles. Scarlet tanagers ate gypsy moths at the rate of thirty-eight per minute for eighteen consecutive minutes. Thirty cedar waxwings will destroy ninety thousand canker-worms in a month. So we can pile up the evidence in favour of the birds. HOW TO ATTRACT BIRDS Two words tell us what to do to increase bird life: provide and protect. We must provide food, water, and nesting places. We must protect from disturbance, from natural enemies, from destruction by hunters who sell the feathers. [Illustration: A birds' table hung with wires] All over the country, laws to protect birds are being introduced into legislatures. Boys and girls may think that they cannot do much to help make laws. They can if their fathers are in the legislature as lots of fathers are, take the country over. Maybe your father does not know how much birds are worth. Get him to read the bulletins issued by the government. The boys who protect the birds around home will be the law makers some fine day themselves. They'll "see to it," then.