STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. I 73 



THE VALUE OF BIRDS.* 



A PAPER READ BEFORE THE HINGHAM (MASS. I AGRIC. ANU HORTIC. SOCIETY, JCLY I9, 1869, 



BY THOMAS M. BREWER, M. D. 



Having accepted, with many misgivings as to my ability to prepare anything worthy 

 of your consideration, an invitation to read a brief paper before the members of our 

 Society, I propose to occupy but a small portion of your time with a subject of vital 

 interest to every tiller of the soil, whether he call himself horticulturist, fruit- culturist, 

 or farmer: the value of birds. 



I do not propose to treat this subject here to-night from any sentimental point of 

 view. Much as I may be moved in n\y own feelings by the beauties of song, of plumage, 

 or of character of my friends of the feathered tribes, all these partialities — weaknesses, 

 if you will — I shall endeavor to leave severely on one side, and to consider only the 

 question of their practical economic value to the husbandman. 



Not that I shall be able to say of any one of the eight hundred different kinds of 

 birds, which inhabit different parts of the United States, this bird does just this specified 

 proportion of good, or just this certain amount of harm. The man does not live who 

 can approximate, wiih certainty, such a conclusion, or give you any reliable data for 

 such pretended certainties. No one but a charlatan and pretender, in the present state 

 of our science, will profess to give, by tables of units, the merits or the demerits of even 

 a single species. It is simply impossible. In Europe the case is somewhat different. 

 There, for many years, at a large outlay of money and of time, with the support and 

 encouragement of government, the most thorough investigations and careful aggregation 

 of facts bearing upon the value of birds have been made, with results so complete in many 

 instances as to amount almost to a thorough demonstration. But in this country it is 

 not so. We cannot give you facts, except in broken series. The facts we can supply 

 are valuable, instructive, suggestive. They point strongly to certain conclusions, but 

 they are isolated, incomplete and are not exhaustive. They may warrant us to form 

 opinions, and those opinions may be well or ill formed, according to our more or less 

 favorable opportunities for forming them ; but for the present they must be only opinions, 

 and not positive knowledge. 



I frankly state to you, thus in advance, the unsatisfactory nature of the ground I am 

 to occupy, and the difficulties of the road I propose with you to travel. I shall there- 

 fore not attempt, except in a verj' general way, and only on general principles, to defend 

 ihe character of our American birds, singly or collectively. Nor do I propose to con- 

 sider, except in the way of example, or as an illustration, any particular species. 



We are all interested, whether we feel any interest or not — that is, all of us who have 

 any interest in the successful tilling of the soil — in the investigations now being made in 

 Europe, in reference to the ravages of insects, the means of averting them and the value 

 of birds as one of the instruments for checking the frightful destruction of property 

 occasioned by these pests. As the precursor, and necessary preface to the views I pro- 

 pose to submit, let me briefly narrate some of the experiences of the agriculturists on 

 the other side of the water. They are important and suggestive. During the last 

 quarter of a century, for some cause or causes, in France, Germany, and in many portions 

 of Central Europe, there has been a constant, .steady and alarming increase of insects. 

 The ravages of the canker-worm in the orchards of New England, of the cotton-worm 

 and the army-worm at the South, and of the grasshoppers at the West, are but slight and 

 unimportant evils in comparison with the wide-spread havoc made in Central Europe by 

 the cockchafer, the night-butterfly and other kinds of insects. It would be well for us 

 of America to study both the phenomena of these insect plagues and the expedients 

 resorted to to abate or prevent them. The laws of Prussia, which hold every man 

 guilty of a misdemeanor and subject to heavy fines if he permit the caterpillar to remain 

 unexterminated in his garden, might to advantage be repeated here. Such a law applied 



♦The above important and interesting paper, by the eminent Boston ornithologist, although first 

 published ten years ago, has lost none of its value, and is reproduced here with the author's consent. 



