SEVEN YEARS WITHOUT BIRDS.

Forest and Bird, Issue 54, 1 November 1939, Page 14

SEVEN YEARS WITHOUT BIRDS.

Seven years without birds would mean the annihiliation of the human race, chiefly because they are the means of keeping the soil moderately free from crop-destroying insects. They catch them in the air, they root out the larvae and the grubs from the earth itself. They are the chief wagers of war against insect pests on plants and trees. Without them there would be no harvests, and, consequently, starvation. Birds are also one of the chief means of carrying seeds. Berried trees and bushes rely on birds to peck the fruits and carry the seeds away in their beaks, then drop them. In the same way, birds, standing on wet ground where the seed has fallen, carry them in the mud they collect on their feet. Birds have carried rare seeds from continent to continent, and natural vegetation is largely dependent on them for propagation.

A price of 3d. a dozen for the eggs or heads of injurious - small birds was fixed for the summer at the monthly meeting of the Ellesmere County Council. Nots. — County Council evidently undertakes to identify the eggs of birds and judge which birds are harmful or beneficial to man, despite the fact that no research has been made into the matter in New Zealand, a task which no informed ornithologist would undertake with the meagre data at present available.

For reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, it has been thought to replace the valuable native forest of New Zealand by artificial plantations of exotics—a quite unusual proceeding in forestry.—S'r David Hutchins.