That was the last straw, and we began a vigorous war upon those wild and predatory cats.  The cats came off second best.  We killed every cat that was found hunting in the park, and we certainly got some that were big and bad.  We eliminated that pest, and we are keeping it eliminated.  And with what result?

In 1911 a covey of eleven quail came and settled in our grounds, and have remained there.  Twenty times at least during the past eight months (winter and spring) I have seen the flock on the granite ledge not more than forty feet from the rear window of my office.  Last spring when I left the Administration Building at six o’clock, after the visitors had gone, I found two half-grown rabbits calmly roosting on the door-mat.  The rabbits are slowly coming back, and the chipmunks are visibly increasing in number.  The gray squirrels now chase over the walks without fear of any living thing, and our ducklings and young guineas and peacocks are safe once more.

That cats destroy annually in the United States several millions of very valuable birds, seems fairly beyond question.  I believe that in settled regions they are worse than weasels, foxes, skunks and mink combined; because there are about one hundred times as many of them, and those that hunt are not afraid to hunt in the daytime.  Of course I am not saying that all cats hunt wild game; but in the country I believe that fully one-half of them do.

I am personally acquainted with a cat in Indiana, on the farm of relatives, which is notorious for its hunting propensities, and its remarkable ability in capturing game.  Even the lady who is joint owner of the cat feels very badly about its destructiveness, and has said, over and over again, that it ought to be killed; but the cat is such a family pet that no one in the family has the heart to destroy it, and as yet no stranger has come forward to play the part of executioner.  The lady in question assured me that to her certain knowledge that particular cat would watch a nestful of young robins week after week until they had grown up to such a size that they were almost ready to fly; then he would kill them and devour them.  Old “Tommy” was too wise to kill the robins when they were unduly small.

In a great book entitled Useful Birds and Their Protection, by E.H.  Forbush, State Ornithologist of Massachusetts, and published by the Massachusetts State Board of Agriculture in 1905, there appears, on page 362, many interesting facts on this subject.  For example: 

Mr. William Brewster tells of an acquaintance in Maine, who said that his cat killed about fifty birds a year.  Mr. A.C.  Dike wrote [to Mr. Forbush] of a cat owned by a family, and well cared for.  They watched it through one season, and found that it killed fifty-eight birds, including the young in five nests.

Nearly a hundred correspondents, scattered through all the counties of the state, report the