Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/230

216 East, picking up great numbers of injurious insects. I am glad to say that the people of Utah appreciate the practical value of these birds, and stringent laws have been passed for their protection.

To the ordinary observer a gull would seem to be of little service to mankind, and to be looked upon only as an aesthetic addition to a marine landscape; this is not the gull's only use, as I have just proved. The gull, as well as every other bird, has a place to fill in the economy of Nature, and, as we learn more and more of the good work the birds are constantly doing for us, we will, it is to be hoped, afford them the protection they deserve.



N 1893 a group of fifteen gentlemen who had been conducting various sociological studies together formed, by adding to their number, the Committee of Fifty to investigate the liquor problem. Subcommittees on the physiological, the legislative, the economic, and the ethical aspects of the problem were appointed in the autumn of that year. The subcommittee on legislative aspects, consisting of President Charles W. Eliot, President Seth Low, and James C. Carter, Esq., engaged Dr. Frederic H. Wines, of Springfield, Ill., well known for his census reports and other investigations on the liquor question, and Mr. John Koren, of Boston, Mass., to examine the working of several typical State liquor laws. The facts obtained by Messrs. Wines and Koren constitute the first report of the subcommittee, which has been published under the authority of the whole Committee of Fifty. Mr. Koren investigated the operation of the liquor laws of Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and Dr. Wines made like investigations in Missouri, Ohio, Iowa, and Indiana.

Much light is thrown upon the question, Does prohibition prohibit? by the conditions found to exist in Maine and Iowa. Maine has been under prohibition for nearly half a century—since 1851, with the exception of the two years from 1856 to 1858. That the famous "Maine law" has never been adequate to its purpose is shown, as the committee's agent points out, by the constant efforts