176 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



beetles and 67,917 of the worms. A viertel contains about 75,000 beetles and about 

 200,000 of the worms. The number of insects thus destroyed in this little district was 

 nearly twenty-two hundred millions, enough with only their natural increase to have 

 destroyed the entire cro;j of that canton. The loss actually occasioned in four small 

 districts, among the Hariz mountains, by these insects, in 1866, is shown by official 

 returns to have been more than a million and a half of thalers — the entire crop of that 

 region. 



I have sought to give you some idea of the enormous losses occasioned by these 

 insect pests. I wish now to call your attention to some very interesting investigations as 

 to the value of birds as one of the surest means of remedying, and indeed the only 

 effectual means of meeting some of its various forms. The French Government has 

 been especially active, and the investigations that have been carefully and persistently 

 made under its patronage have been of the highest value. M. Florent Prevost has 

 been at the head of the investigations, and has so devoted himself to them as to make 

 them the great mission of his life. I have studied his reports, and give full faith to the 

 general laws and principles which he has educed from his long-continued investigations, 

 that cover a space of a third of a century. They may all be summed up in this com- 

 prehensive and sententious dogma: " No agriculturist can take the life of any bird 

 without doing that which can result only in loss to himself." I believe that in this he 

 is entirely right. Every bird has its mission of good, though we may not now see it. 

 I do not ask or expect you to go so far as this in the present state of our knowledge. It 

 may yet be a long while before we shall be educated to a full knowledge of the value 

 of this standing army, this feathered host of Nature's constabulary, who stand as her 

 great counterpoise between the insect powers of destruction and the fruits of the earth. 

 M. Prevost has demonstrated beyond all dispute that all birds are more or less insect- 

 ivorous — that those we generally regard as insect-eating birds especially do not, as a 

 general thing, destroy those insects that do us the most harm, and that, for the most part, 

 the birds which render the most effectual services in destroying the most noxious insects 

 are birds against which popular prejudices are the strongest. The sparrows, the starlings 

 and crows are the great destroyers of the cockchafers, as our crows and blackbirds are 

 of the May-beetles, and we are but just finding out that many birds we have deemed to 

 be our enemies are really our best friends. 



Another most important law of nature revealed by M. Prevost's investigation is of 

 especial interest. This is, that nearly all birds, during the period of reproduction, 

 whatever may be their natural food at other times, are almost entirely insect-eaters, and 

 that they feed their young almost exclusively with insect food. Then the amount of 

 insect food a young bird will consume in a given time is enormous. Dr. Wyman took 

 from the crop of a young pigeon a mass of canker-worms that was more than twice 

 the weight of the bird itself; and it is shown by Prof. Treadwell, that a young robin 

 will eat, and require too, for his well-being, at least his own weight in insect food. On 

 less than this he cannot live twenty-four hours. 



Let us admire the wisdom and goodness of Providence so clearly shown in this 

 universal law of nature, that, in the season when insects most abound and increase, the 

 whole feathered tribe, without any known exceptions of those who inhabit the land, 

 become insect-eaters by preference. And those insects which are most abundant, and 

 which do our crops the most harm, and which man is so powerless to check when they 

 have once got the upper hand, all have their enemies among the resident birds who 

 would be able to keep them in complete subjection if man did not interfere. No insect 

 has so many enemies as our worst pest, the canker-worm. But none of these are per- 

 mitted by man to have any chance. The purple grakle eats our corn and we have nearly 

 extirpated them. The cherry-bird is an outlaw, and hunted without mercy. Our wild 

 pigeons are too tempting to the epicure to be spared, and our tame doves, who might 

 be made a better substitute, are not sufficiently abundant. Prowling cats destroy a very 

 large proportion of the chipping-sparrows and vireos, and so on, until the canker-worm, 

 between our destruction of its natural enemies and our half-attempts to keep it down, 

 riots in unchecked and ever-increasing destructiveness. 



It has been fully demonstrated in Europe that even the most destructive of all their 

 terrible pests, the cockchafer, can be very nearly or quite exterminated by taking pains 



