THE SECRETARY'S PORTFOLIO. 337 



ECONOMIC ORNITHOLOGY. 



Prof. Stearns, of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, addressed the 

 Connecticut Board of Agriculture upon the above topic, taking the ground 

 that a majority of our birds were of value in repressing insect life. He said it 

 was still a question how to place birds in the two classes, beneficial or injurious ; 

 individual species lap over so upon each other in their habits. The hawks are 

 acknowledged birds of prey ; they catch our chickens ; so, also, do crows, which 

 have not been called predacious. The robin is another about which there is 

 much dispute. It certainly eats fruit; it destroys a great many insects when 

 they arc more abundant than fruit, which is the greater part of the time. The 

 young robin is insect-eating, and requires more than the weight of its body 

 daily when growing in the nest. The swallows are sometimes annoying on 

 account of the filth left about their nests, but they destroy vast numbers of 

 insects,, particularly those which infest grain fields; 500,000 insects is not 

 more than would be required to keep the inmates of a single nest fed during 

 the three weeks of growth. The bluebird collects his insect food near the 

 buildings and on the lawns. The kingbird should be cherished ; if he can be 

 induced to build in a cherry-tree no robin or other bird will be allowed to take 

 the fruit. The blue jay helps man by scattering and planting the seeds of 

 fruit trees. The chickadee must be classed as a friend to the farmer, though 

 he is somewhat destructive to other birds by destroying their eggs. Of the 

 eighteen species of birds of prey which inhabit our grounds, thirteen remain 

 with us the whole year. 



A writer in the Country Gentleman takes a different view : Cultivators do 

 not make sufficient discriminations between useful and noxious birds, and 

 useful and noxious Insects. There is no reason to believe that destructive 

 insects are kept in check more by insect parasites which prey upon them, than 

 by all the services performed by birds ; and the insect-eating bii'ds are as likely 

 to devour these parasites, which are the friend of the cultivator, as noxious 

 species. 



We have had tens of thousands of curculios killed in our orchards by a sin- 

 gle active hired man, and at the rate, while he was at work at them, of two 

 thousand a day, but it has been rare to find one of these beetles in the crop of 

 any bird. Had we waited for the birds to do the work, onr trees would not 

 have borne the loads of yellow, and crimson, and purple Iruit Avhich we have 

 enjoyed. The codling-moth has for many past years nearly ruined our apples, 

 notwithstanding the flocks of birds frequenting the orchards; the Avork of 

 one man last spring, for less than one day, gave us fair apples on the loaded 

 trees with not one infested specimen in half a dozen. The same man destroys 

 tens of thousands of potato bugs Avith less labor than he cultivates the crop, 

 but no bird except the larger domestic fowls will touch them. The orchard 

 caterpillar is always destroyed by hand, the birds making no impression. 



Of the clouds of insects Avhich appear in summer, a large portion do neither 

 harm nor good, and on these the insectivorous birds chiefly subsist. The ques- 

 tion of the utility of birds has very little connection Avith fruitgrowing. The 

 matter of their encouragement rests Avith our interest in them on other 

 grounds. There are a fcAV species which live on the small fruits of summer, 

 and sometimes sweep off in a fcAv hours the careful labor of years; and these 

 fruits the cultivator Avill be Avilling to allow tiiem as a matter of choice, if he 



43 



