Checking the Waste Part 21

The boys and girls should be banded together in the schools or in societies and pledged to protect birds and not to destroy them. The girls should pledge themselves not to wear birds for ornament.

Women's clubs might do much to popularize the movement for the protection of birds, and to that end should try to establish a sentiment among their members against their use for millinery.

All these agencies working together will make a vast difference in the number of birds, and as a result, in the good that they do, but the great work must be done by farmers themselves. They will need to protect themselves in certain ways against the harm done by many of the birds that on the whole are extremely useful.

To protect poultry from owls do not allow it to roost in the trees; to protect from hawks, keep the young ones near the house, and if possible cover their runways with wire netting.

To protect against grain eating, use scarecrows or put up a dead crow as a warning. Mixing seed corn with tar so as to coat it will prevent crows from pulling it up at planting time.

To protect against fruit eating, plant wild fruits. The best of all trees for this purpose is the Russian mulberry, which ripens at the same time that cherries do and is particularly relished by all fruit-eating birds. If planted in barn-lots, chickens and hogs will eat all the fruit that falls to the ground, making it serve a double purpose. The fruit of wild cherry, elder, dogwood, haws, and mountain-ash are eaten by birds, and if a farm be planted with such trees and bushes in the barn-yard, along the lanes or in some of those unproductive spots that are to be found on every farm, birds will be attracted to the farm and will pay well for themselves, and the farmer's crop of cultivated fruit will be protected. Birds themselves distribute many seeds, particularly of wild fruits.

The farmer who keeps several cats must pay for it in the loss of birds, for birds will not nest where they are constantly watched by cats. Boxes for martins and other birds, bits of hay, horse-hair and string scattered about will often encourage birds to build about an orchard or farm. A wood-lot, besides paying in other ways, will afford nesting places for a large number of birds. To place a drinking and bathing place near the house is one of the best methods of attracting birds, which will use it constantly.

By all these methods and a little winter feeding with crumbs, apple peelings or waste fruit and grain, the farmer will be able to induce a good variety of birds to nest on his farm, and will receive in return great protection from the small mammals, insects and weeds that would lessen the amount of his harvests.

REFERENCES

Relation Between Birds and Insects. Yearbook 486.

Annual Reports of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution.

Annual Reports of the National Audubon Society.

Bird Day. How to Prepare For It. C. C. Babc.o.c.k.

Bird Neighbors. John Burroughs.

Bird enemies. John Burroughs.

How to Attract the Birds. N. B. Doubleday.

The Food of Nestling Birds. Yearbook 1900.

Does It Pay the Farmer to Protect Birds? Yearbook 1907.

Birds as Weed Destroyers. Yearbook 1898.

How Birds Affect the Orchard. Yearbook 1900.

Value of Swallows as Insect Destroyers. Yearbook Reprint.

Birds That Eat Scale Insects. Yearbook Reprint.

Birds Useful for the Destruction of the Cotton Boll-Weevil. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletins 57, 64.

Hawks and Owls From the Standpoint of the Farmer. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin 61.

Some Common Birds in Their Relation to Agriculture. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin 54.

Four Common Birds of the Farm and Garden. Yearbook 1895.

CHAPTER XII

HEALTH

When we have improved our soil and replanted our forests and learned the most economical methods of mining our great deposits of coal, iron, and other minerals; when we have made the waters do our work and carry our freight and water our waste places; when we have learned to care for our birds and our fishes, and taken measures to stop the ravages of insects; when we have preserved our natural beauties and increased them by planting trees, shrubs, and flowers, and filling unsightly corners; there still remains to be considered the greatest subject of all,--the people who are to enjoy this wonderful inheritance. If they were to be weak and sick, suffering from all kinds of diseases, dying in great numbers, all these things would count for little. But men and women, as they are learning how to conserve their natural resources, are thinking far more than ever before of health and how to keep it. It is necessary to think of these things, for as people crowd into cities, where they live a life different from that which nature intended, sickness and the death-rate increase greatly.

Health, by which we mean the possession of a strong, well body, free from pain, should bring with it great power to work and to think and to benefit the world; and should also bring great happiness and enjoyment to the person who possesses it, for though sick people may be happy, and well people unhappy, yet it is a general rule that to be strong and well is the first great step toward being happy.

The question, "Is life worth living?" was once happily answered, "It depends upon the liver;" and it is true in both senses, for not only does happiness depend on what one gets out of life, but on good digestion. It is only the person who feels well who really enjoys life.

The person who can get up each morning able to do a day's work or have a day's enjoyment, is the one on whom we must depend for the world's work and invention. We seldom find a strong, vigorous mind in a weak body.

On the other hand, the invalid is the idle member of the family or the community. He can not find pleasure for himself nor do anything to help others, and not only that, but he must be cared for by others, thus taking the labor of the sick person himself and of his nurse. It is coming to be seen that this is a great waste of time, of money, of work, and of happiness, and people are determining that if these wastes can be stopped, it is well worth all the time and thought and money necessary to bring about the change.

People everywhere are thinking about health, and because of this, Christian Science, the Emmanuel Movement and the various sects which practise faith or mental healing have sprung up.

Hospitals and health officers are doing much for the public health.

Doctors themselves are changing their ideas and are teaching us not only how to cure but how to prevent disease.

Doctors are also seeking not only to prevent disease but to find new ways of treating it. They are discarding drugs in as many cases as possible, frequently using serums in which cultures from the disease itself are used for its cure.

Health means more ability to work, more means of learning, of accomplis.h.i.+ng great things, more pleasures in every day that is lived; and so it is as important to preserve health, in order to enjoy life, as it is to prevent death. We can realize how few persons have perfect health by noting the common salutation "How do you do?" or "How are you?"

Serious sickness is such as renders a person entirely unable to work.

Benefit societies have found that the average number of days of sickness per year from each person under seventy years of age is ten, of which at least two are spent in bed.

About a million and a half people die each year in the United States, and it is estimated that twice that number, or three million persons, are constantly unable even to care for themselves. The effect of this is felt on the patient himself, in suffering, in loss of time in which he is unable to earn money, and in the amount spent for doctors, medicine, and nursing. It is felt on the family, in which the household machinery is thrown out while the wife and mother nurses the sick members of the family, or is herself too ill to work, or when the father's income stops on account of sickness.

The entire community suffers from the constant idleness of three million persons, as well as from the deaths which withdraw a still larger number of persons from actual work for a period of two to five days during the time of death and burial of the bodies of members of the family.

Then there is all the long train of small ailments, which do not make us seriously ill, often do not even keep us from work, but which do take away from the pleasure and enjoyment of life, which render work a burden instead of a delight, and lessen our ability to work by many degrees.

Not only this, but they all have within them the possibility of developing into serious diseases. Such lesser troubles are colds, headache, catarrh, dyspepsia, nervousness, neuralgia, sore throat, skin eruptions, rheumatism, toothache, earache, affections of the eyes, lameness, sprains, bruises, cuts, and burns.

Civilization has brought us great blessings but it has also brought with it many dangers to health. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale says:

"The invention of houses has made it possible for mankind to spread all over the globe but it is responsible for tuberculosis or consumption.

The invention of cooking has widened the variety of man's diet but has led to the decay of his teeth. The invention of the alphabet and printing has produced eye strain with all its attendant evils. The invention of chairs has led to spinal curvature, etc., etc. Yet it would be foolish even if it were possible to attempt to return to nature in the sense of abolis.h.i.+ng civilization.

"The cure for eye strain is not in disregarding the invention of reading, but in introducing the invention of gla.s.ses. The cure for tuberculosis is not in the destruction of houses but in ventilation. It is a little knowledge that is dangerous. Civilization can, with fuller knowledge, bring its own cure, and make the 'kingdom of man' far larger than the 'nature' people can ever dream of."

Until within the last few years, sickness and death were regarded from a religious standpoint. All sickness was to be borne with patience and resignation because all our sufferings were sent by an all-wise Providence. But since science has clearly proved that typhoid fever is usually caused by an impure water supply, and that boiling the water would prevent the suffering, expense and possible death; that the dreaded yellow fever can be banished from communities that destroy the eggs of certain mosquitoes; and many other facts in regard to health have been learned, a great change has come over the popular belief. It is seen that, to a great extent, man holds his own fate and is responsible for his own suffering, and people are eager to learn more about their own bodies, how to cure them and how to keep them well.