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by a joint committee, appointed for the purpose.

Secretary McAdoo has recently modi- fied the work of destroying- the paper money so as to meet present conditions better. Now each member of the com- mittee will check the money and securi- ties delivered as well as witness their destruction. In the past, one member of the committee has usually verified the amount and the whole committee merely witnessed the destruction. The new regu- lations are designed to simplify the work and throw greater safeguards around the destruction of money and securities. The record shows that the paper money de- stroyed in 1915 had a total weight of five hundred and ninetv tons.

���Popular Science Monthly

food dead fish, garbage, and offal of vari- ous sorts, and their services in cleaning up such material are not to be regarded lightly. It will, however, surprise many to learn that some of the gull family ren- der important inland service, especially to agriculture. At least one species, the Cali- fornia gull, is ex- tremely fond of field mice, and during an outbreak of that pest in Nevada in 1907-8 hundreds of gulls assembled in and near the devastated alfalfa

���One reason why half a paper bill is worthless. The treasury department cuts the returned bills into two pieces lengthwise as a preliminary to its total destruction

��How Gulls Help the Farmer

TPIE term "gull is usually associated in the popular mind only with long- winged swimmers seen along the salt water shores and in coast harbors. There are represented in the United States, however, twenty-two species or sub- species of gulls, including the gull-like birds known as skuas and jaegers. Of these some are true inland birds, fre- quenting prairies, marshes, and inland lakes. Flocks of gulls on the waters of our harbors or following the wake of vessels are a familiar sight, but not every observer of the graceful motions of the bird is aware of the fact, that gulls are the original "white wings."

As sea scavengers they welcome as

��fields and fed entirely on mice, thus lending the farmers material aid in their warfare against the pestiferous little rodents.

In Salt Lake City, is a monument sumiounted by two bronze gulls, erected by the people of that city "in grateful remembrance" of the signal service ren- dered by these birds at a critical time in the history of the community. For three consecutive years — 1848, 1849. and 1850 — black crickets by millions threat- ened to ruin the crops upon which de- pended the very lives of the settlers. Large flocks of gulls came to the rescue and devoured vast numbers of the de- structive insects, until the fields were entirely freed from them.

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