20 The hish Naturalist, January, 



2,000 caterp'llars in one day, and a robin has been known to eat fourteen 

 feet of earthworms in a day. Take our 62,000,000 pairs of breeding birds. 

 Say that one-third of them have young at any one time ; let the parents 

 visit the nest with food everv five minutes, for onlv ten hours rer dav, 

 and this low basis means that over 2,500,000,000 meals are furnished !o 

 our infant birds each day during the breeding season. We may there- 

 fore reasonably ask how do these birds affect us r Do they cost us any- 

 thing or save us anything ': Speaking in general terms, and of our birds 

 as a whole, the mortifying confession must be made that we do not 

 know. This want of knowledge was clearly admitted l)y the third Inter- 

 national Ornithological Congress which met at Paris in 1900, and which 

 passed a resolution requesting the different nations to institute resear- 

 ches into the feeding of birds. Owing to this lack of knowledge very 

 diverse views are held by different classes of people, but in this case 

 the issues at stake are so important that we must use neither the rose- 

 tinted glasses of the sentimentalist nor the smoked glasses of the farmer 

 or gardener. We must rely upon the glasses of the microscope in the 

 hands of a properly qualified investigator, who must be a botanist and 

 entomologist as well as an ornithologist. The examination of the 

 stomach contents of the dead ))ird has been well called the " Court 

 of Final Appeal,'" and it is the one that should be employed by the vState 

 to ascertain its friends and its foes amongst the birds. The only careful 

 detailed and prolonged investigation into the food of three common 

 British birds that was known to the lecturer was that carried out by Sir 

 John Gilmour in iMfeshire in 1894, when he investigated the food of 

 Wood- pigeons, Rooks, and vStarlings for twelve consecutive months. A 

 fairlv large and regular number of birds was obtained, the actual num- 

 bers being 265 Wood-pigeons, 355 Rooks, and 190 Starlings. It was 

 shown that the Wood-pigeon is a most expensive and dangerous bird, 

 as he attacks and uses the very best of all our crops, the grains of all 

 our cereals^ and the leaves of all our clovers. Even though grain be 

 left entirely out of court, the Wood-pigeon stands condemned by the 

 heavy score standing against him for root-crop and clover leaf destruc- 

 tion. The details of the Rook"s food showed that 58 per cent, of this 

 bird's food is grain, and that the insects and grubs consumed would not 

 nearly compensate the farmer for the enormous loss of grain The con- 

 clusion arrived at is that Rooks in the enormous quantities in which we 

 have them in some counties do an immense amount of damage, and 

 entail an unsuspected and severe loss to the farmers. Their numbers 

 should certainly be kept within reasonable limits. The Starling, on the 

 other hand, is the undoubted friend of the farmer, and this bird should 

 be encouraged and protected The Starling, while using a very small 

 amount of grain, is responsible for an immense destruction of injurious 

 insects. INIost interesting details were given of the food of Kestrels and 

 Owls, and it was shown beyond any doubt that these birds are the true 

 friends of the farmer, and should be most carefully preserved and pro- 

 tected because of the huge numbers of mice and rats which they destroy. 



