Beyond question, the telegraph and telephone wires of the United States
annually exact a heavy toll in bird life, and claim countless thousands
of victims. They may well be set down as one of the unseen forces
destructive to birds.

Naturally, we ask, what can be done about it?

I am told that in Scotland such 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