Y MAY 1st. practically. all of our migrant birds of the Northern States have returned from their southern sojourn of six months or more. In using the word "all," I do so as to species and not numbers, for their return nearly always shows much diminution. Without preferring a direct charge of slaughter to any particular locality, it is a fact that in past years while one section of the country practiced conservation of bird life and promoted its increase, it lasted no longer than until the birds migrated to a region where - bird-life is not respected, nor its value appreciated.

In certain winter resorts birds were regarded in no more sacred sense than so far as their diminutive bodies would contribute towards a pot-pie. Robins, larks, thrushes, flickers and many more were the prey of gunner and gourmand, who devoured without compunction of conscience. The protection of insectivorous birds has become a question of mighty vital importance to the northern farmer and orchardist. In recent years insect pests have increased to an alarming extent, both in numbers and new, unheard-of species. If all the insectdevouring birds were extinct, no field or orchard crops could be grown after three or four years had passed.

So important has been the matter of birdprotection that the Federal government sent out experts some time ago to study the respective value of various species as destroyers of insect pests. To render information complete as possible, specimens were killed and the stomach contents examined and every worm, beetle, moth, and other insect carefully counted and the numbers of each recorded.

Such investigations revealed that certain birds were valuable as insect exterminators which had formerly been regarded as feeders on grain and seeds alone.

One of our most common birds, the robin, was formerly looked upon as a glutton among the cherry and berry crops. The writer has seen the farmer, his sons and hired man postpone work in the fields to stand guard with shotguns and shoot the robins as they came into the cherry-trees. But now, under advanced ideas, it would be hard to find a fruit-grower who begrudges robin red-breast the few cherries he consumes in the light of the good he does at other times, devouring insects. In

By J. A. NEWTON

my State the robin is protected by law, along with all other insect-eating birds and were they not, the birds would still be quite safe, as there is a general solicitude for the welfare of the birds, in country and city. If fruit-eating birds become troublesome now, scare-crows and bells are employed, but no thought of destroying them is entertained. Even in the fruit season, dissection of the robin stomach discloses a mixed diet of fruit, worms, and harmful insect pests. His inspiring song of "cheer up" "cheer up," is the first wild bird note to gladden our ears when the snows of winter are gone and mild temperatures announce the approach of spring. The robin is naturally a sociable bird, and is common around human habitations, especially where dilapidated buildings are found. In cities of the north robins are even more tame than in the rural districts and nest quite commonly where buildings afford lodgement and shelter from storms. Often nests are made and the young hatched in the shelter of porches within a few feet of the daily coming and going of the house occupants.

During the season of the greatest heat it is common to see this bird place himself under the spray when the lawn is being sprinkled. I have had them alight and stand under quite a heavy stream within a dozen feet of me while watering the lawn. At other times they hop along before me, only a step or two out of reach.

Our most important insectivorous birds, besides robins, are the thrushes, cat-birds, king-birds, wrens, cockoos, chewinks, tanagers, bobolinks, phoebe-birds, warblers, song-sparrows, orioles, grosbeaks, shrikes, jays, and the wood-pecker tribe. There are many more, such as the finches, blue-birds, nut-hatchers, chickadees, tree-creepers, etc. Even the crow-blackbird is worthy of mention, for his sharp eyes detect many a cut-worm and he is one of the few birds that will devour the young, soft-bodied potato bug.

The blue-jay is allied to the crow family and until within very recent years nobody had any particular praise to bestow upon him; about his only charm was his handsome painted plumage. He was an arrant thief, robbing the nests of other birds, stealing nuts and grain and hiding what was not desired for immediate use in the cracks and crannies of buildings, and his harsh, discordant cry was not pleasing to the But inspection of the jay's stomach re

ear.

No.

vealed such a collection of cut-grubs, tentcaterpillars and other insect pests that all his mischievous ways are overlooked and estimation of his value is raised at least fifty per cent. What a radical change since the days when his supposed worthlessness made him a target for all who saw fit to so waste their ammunition!

The wood-pecker family comprise a useful branch among insectivorous birds; in fact no other can quite take its place. He is always inspecting the trunks of trees for the lair of grubs and the larvae of insects and drills deep into the timber and extracts them from their deep recesses, where they are safe from all other birds.

I have always taken a great interest in woodpecker life. He is so mechanical and industrious; it may require a half hour of hammering and drilling to secure one wood-boring grub, but he persists; hard drubbing is no discouragement. He is no shirk, no idler; he is willing to work for a living and if ever a living creature earned its keeping, it is this bird-carpenter.

Sometimes as I watched him chopping on some partly decayed tree or stub I imagined that his efforts represented a pent-up energy that must have vent in vigorous work, whether a meal was desired or not. Or it might be, as an aged man opined: "He does it to keep his bill in working order."

The wood-pecker family is much more suspicious of man's intentions than robin redbreast, and certain other birds which dwell largely in the clearings.

The wildest specimen of the wood-peckers is also the largest. I refer to the pileated woodpecker, with erect, scarlet tuft which surmounts his crown. In size he is about as large as a tame pigeon and confines himself mainly to the deep woods among big timber, is exceedingly alert and difficult to approach within anything like easy gunshot range. He utters a cry loud and rattling, almost like the gobble of a turkey, which can be heard a considerable distance. But his drumming can be heard several times as far; I believe I have heard the sound when the maker of it was a mile distant. He drills many holes in partly decayed trees and stubs and sometimes bushels of chips cover the ground. It is in one of these augur holes having a well at the end that the eggs are laid; no pretensions are made at nest making, the (Continued on Page 53).

OR days and days the lone traveler has journeyed through an absolutely unbroken forest, a dense primeval forest of black spruce, cedar and tamarack in the lowlands, white spruce, balsam and white birch on the higher reaches, and the end is not yet in sight. The only relief to the monotony of constantly recurring types of landscape are the numerous lakes and ponds which nestle in almost every depression; ponds from a fourth mile to a mile in extent, and lakes which are just the same, but larger. They may be of any size from a mile or two to ten or twenty miles in length; the shores of rugged granite cliffs, or of flat cranberry marsh, known to the few natives as "muskeg."

Yet there is an occasional variation, a different type of forest, for in places fires started, no man knows how, have laid the original bush in ruins and a new forest of white birch and poplar has grown up in its place. Strange, is it not, when there was originally very little if any poplar on the ground, now thickly grown with saplings and small trees of this kind?

This is early July and the trees are in full leaf. Six weeks prior to this date not a leaf was yet unfolded on the birches and poplars, for spring laps well over into the summer in that north country. Underfoot in the "second growth" woods is a dense and thrifty growth of weeds, "fire weeds," "potato weeds," and weeds of many kinds never known in the south. It seems almost tropical, so dense and luxurious is the vegetation. It is early morning and the air is chilly. The traveler has just broken his night's camp and has finished his breakfast of bacon, bannock and black tea, has packed his kit and with his entire stock of worldly goods in a pack on his back, is once more "hitting the trail," if such an expression is permissible, for there is no trail if we except the paths made by wild beasts, and such are common. The sun is rising in the southeast and keeping the front of his left shoulder in this direction, the traveler commences another day's journey. He is headed towards the settlements, still many days' travel to the south.

The sun climbs higher and the air grows warmer. Hordes of gnats-black flies as they are called in the north-swarm before the traveler and annoy him. There seem to be millions of the pests; they are as countless as the sands of the sea. They are so common that he is hardly conscious of their existence, yet they annoy him.

An hour's upward toil and the wayfarer stands on top of a rock crowned hill. It is bald of head, like an old man, and the granite crown is seamed and rounded, the seams all leading towards the south. On the very pinnacle a large boulder attracts the man's attention. He curiously inspects it and finds that it is of a different kind of rock from that on which it rests. The corners are rounded and its general appearance indicates much wear. How came it there? What great force carried that mighty boulder from its former bed, perhaps a hundred

miles farther north and deposited it here on the top of the high hills? The man wonders, for although a seasoned bushman, wise in the ways of the woods, he has no book knowledge to mention and knows nothing of the great glacial period which for forty thousand years covered more than half of North America with a moving field of ice. He does not know that this great glacier by its action, carrying with it great boulders, ground down the granite hills and made the seams which point to the south, leaving boulders of a different kind of rock on the hilltops.

The man is tired from his climb, so he drops his pack and mounts the rock for a view of the country which lies before him. He looks down on the top of the forest which stretches away as far as the eye can see over hills and valleys alike, unbroken except for the many lakes and ponds. In the southeast lies a large lake, or perhaps it is two lakes, for at one place the forests seem to meet. At the foot of the hill he also sees the gleam of water among the trees. He sits down and takes a smoke and muses on the wonders of nature. Perhaps he thinks sometimes of another land, far, far to the south, where there are many people, and cities, and a life so different. But his pipe has burned out and he remembers suddenly that he must hurry on.

The little lake at the foot of the hill is surrounded by a dense growth of black spruce, trees of ten or twelve inches in diameter and fifty or sixty feet high. They are not large trees, for large trees are the exception in the north; but they are straight, heavy, in foliage and very impressive. They grow from a bed of gray-green moss which has no bottom, and between the trees grows the muskeg brush, which looks like minature rhododendron. Here and there paths are beaten into the decayed moss and as the water is approached the paths grow deeper and more numerous. There are brush broken down and the bark stripped off. These are the signs of moose and caribou, the giant deer which are found in almost incredible numbers in the great woods of the north. As the traveler emerges from the forest near the water's edge he sees one of the animals standing on the margin of the lake, at the opposite shore. A glance shows him that it is a moose, but he is not interested— the game is too common. As he pauses on the shore and looks down into the still, black lake an almost unbearable feeling of lonliness steals over him. Possessed of an unaccountable uneasiness, he looks behind him. He was almost prepared to see some great monster about to push him into the black water; but there is nothing but the still, dark, forbidding forest. His glance travels out over the placid surface. The moose is gone and there is not a sign of life. But as he looks two specks appear on the surface of the lake and resolve themselves into large birds-a pair of loons. Suddenly one of them stretches his neck and gives his mournful, weird cry, then both disappear beneath the water.

There is a fascination in these lonely lakes and the traveler turns his face towards the southeast, for he wants to know something about the large lake he saw from the hilltop. It has grown hot now; but he plods steadily along, now over open ridges where the greenish white berries tell him that a little later there will be an abundance of luscious blueberries for the bears; now through flat spruce swamps, and for long distances through growths of white birch, balsam and spruce timber.

It is mid-day when the traveler emerges on the shore of the large lake. It stretches away to the south for miles, the ragged shore line appearing for the most part high and heavily wooded. Tree-covered islands break the surface in places. The water glistens white in the sunlight and the breeze, which is blowing gently from the north, ripples the surface into small, silvery waves.

Removing his pack the man selects a small, slender sapling, and with his heavy knife cuts it and trims it of branches. From his coat pocket he produces a ten-foot line and clumsy fishhook, which he ties to the end and baits with a small scrap of the fat bacon in his pack. Then walking down the shore a few rods to a place where jutting rocks promise deep water, he throws the baited hook out ten feet from shore. The white bacon zigzags its way down into the mysterious water, growing dimmer and dimmer, until it suddenly dis appears and the line quickly straightens. With a quick heave of the rod the man throws a fourteen-inch speckled trout onto the rocky ledge behind him, and removing it from the hook, he kills it by rapping its head on the butt of the rod. It is all he needs for lunch so he unties the line and replaces it in his pocket. How interesting the dressing of that fish! With the keen, long, pointed knife two cuts are made in the throat where the gills meet and a long incision made along the underside of the body exposes the entrails. With a deft movement they are drawn from the cavity and the incisions in the throat release the entire mass, leaving in the man's hand a clean, neatly dressed fish. It has taken but a half minute and the fish has not at any time left the man's hand. He washes it in the crystal water and lays it on a wave-lapped stone to await its turn in the frying pan.

This utensil is of small size and instead of the usual handle it has, riveted to the edge, a square socket of sheet iron. With his belt axe the man cuts a stick an inch and a half thick and a foot long, which he shapes into a handle to fit the socket. Then he places in the pan two slices of bacon. He could eat more, but his supply is limited. A fire is quickly made and a small tin-pail is half filled with water and suspended over the fire for making tea. Then the bacon is fried and the trout, cut into two pieces, is sprinkled with salt, inside and out, and placed in the sizzling grease. While it is frying the water comes to a boil and the man measures with his fingers a certain quantity of black tea and drops it into the pail, then adds a little pinch more and pulls the pail to one side of the fire, where the tea will draw without danger of boiling.

The man eats his lunch rapidly through force of habit. Flour having become scarce, he can allow himself only a small piece of the bannock he baked last night by the camp fire. He has not tasted butter or sugar for months and he dwells fondly on the prospect of indulging freely in such luxuries when he reaches civilization. Eating and sleeping are his greatest pleasures there are few others in the woods