10 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



us, and more especially to endeavour to impress upon the 

 young people the necessity for preserving certain birds from 

 destruction. Those unaccustomed to dissecting birds can 

 have but a faint idea of the enormous quantity of insects 

 which many even of the smaller birds devour, and a better 

 acquaintance with both birds and insects would, I am sure, 

 tend to prevent the wholesale slaughter of creatures so use- 

 ful." 



Let us now inquire what available force we have in this 

 colony upon which reliance can be placed for resisting the 

 ever-increasing army of insect enemies which threaten our 

 field and garden crops, our orchards and fruit plantations, 

 and our flower-beds. Apart from insect-destroying insects, 

 such as the ichneumons, the dragon-flies, and others of the 

 like proclivities, we have only a few insecting-eating birds, 

 of which some are indigenous and others are imported. 

 The indigenous birds are rarely found outside the native 

 bush, and are now very few in number. In my garden 

 there are two or three pairs of fantails, which are always 

 diligent in the pursuit of food. The seagulls do much to 

 lessen the number of destructive larvae by following the 

 plough in the extensive cultivations along the seaboard of 

 the South Island. Of the imported birds, the white-eyed 

 Zosterops, the blackbird, and the thrush feed upon animal 

 food throughout the winter, but will certainly, unless pre- 

 vented, take any opportunity presented to them of attack- 

 ing fruit in its season. The thrushes have kept my garden 

 free from the snail, which does mischief to the young forms 

 of certain classes of plants ; but both these birds confine 

 themselves to the neighbourhood of plantations. The star- 

 ling ranges the pastures, but does not, so far as my ob- 

 servation has gone, take any part in clearing the crops of 

 grain, corn, and pulse of the insects which attack them. 

 We are reduced, then, to the sparrow, including the re- 

 cently introduced hedge-sparrow, a most valuable bird, 

 which alone are left to protect us from the horde of in- 

 sects that attack everything we grow. I keep a brigade 

 of them, to which I give a, certain amount of daily food, 

 not sufficient, however, to diminish their diligence in the 

 search for insects. I see the work they do in this respect. 

 I see them during the breeding-season each day carrying 

 hundreds of insects to their young, which could not live on 

 any other form of food. I see my garden crops kept fairly free 

 from injurious insects by their means and tneirs only, and I 

 do not grudge them the modicum of fruit which they take in 

 its season. I see how difficult it is to raise fruit in this 

 country owing to the absence of the ordinary natural checks 

 upon the increase of the insects which prey upon it. Nature, 



