* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIV

INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT HAVE BEEN BENEFICIAL

Man has made numerous experiments in the transplantation of wild species of mammals and birds from one country, or continent, to another.  About one-half these efforts have been beneficial, and the other half have resulted disastrously.

The transplantation of any wild-animal species is a leap in the dark.  On general principles it is dangerous to meddle with the laws of Nature, and attempt to improve upon the code of the wilderness.  Our best wisdom in such matters may easily prove to be short-sighted folly.  The trouble lies in the fact that concerning transplantation it is impossible for us to know beforehand all the conditions that will affect it, or that it will effect, and how it will work out.  In its own home a species may seem not only harmless, but actually beneficial to man.  We do not know, and we can not know, all the influences that keep it in check, and that mould its character.  We do not know, and we can not know without a trial, how new environment will affect it, and what new traits of character it will develop under radically different conditions.  The gentle dove of Europe may become the tyrant dove of Cathay.  The Repressed Rabbit of the Old World becomes in Australia the Uncontrollable Rabbit, a devastator and a pest of pests.

No wild species should be transplanted and set free in a wild state to stock new regions without consulting men of wisdom, and following their advice.  It is now against the laws of the United States to introduce and acclimatize in a wild state, anywhere in the United States, any wild-bird species without the approval of the Department of Agriculture.  The law is a wise one.  Furthermore, the same principle should apply to birds that it is proposed to transplant from one portion of the United States into another, especially when the two are widely separated.

On this point, I once learned a valuable lesson, which may well point my present moral.  Incidentally, also, it was a narrow escape for me!

A gentlemen of my acquaintance, who admires the European magpie, and is well aware of its acceptable residence in various countries in Europe, once requested my cooperation in securing and acclimatizing at his country estate a number of birds of that species.  As in duty bound, I laid the matter before our Department of Agriculture, and asked for an opinion.  The Department replied, in effect, “Why import a foreign magpie when we have in the West a species of our own quite as handsome, and which could more easily be transplanted?”

The point seemed well taken.  Now, I had seen much of the American magpie in its wild home,—­the Rocky Mountains, and the western border of the Great Plains,—­and I thought I was acquainted with it.  I knew that a few complaints against it had been made, but they had seemed to me very trivial.  To me our magpie seemed to have a generally unobjectionable record.