254 



TRANSACTIONS OF THE NORTHERN 



available, mulching may be substituted for summer cultivation. When orchard trees have attained 

 bearing: age, continued surface culture is not advisable— at least on broken grounds. We would not 

 advise any coxtinued system of treatment for a succession of years, but rather something like a 

 EOTATION OF TREATMEN^T. If grounds are seeded to grasses, the grass should be mowed and left to 

 enrich the surface of the ground. Old straw and coarse manures should be applied to the thin soils- 

 of broken points. If the orchard is cultivated one year, it may be lelt the next to grow up with tall 

 weeds; and after the weeds have attained full growth, and before the ripening oftlieseed, let them 

 be harrowed smoothly down with a heavy harrow; thus flattened down they decay and form a surface 

 mulching. Though this practice seems slovenly, it is very good in old bearing orchards; the weeds- 

 being thus luuTowed down as the apples commence to ripen, are out of the way. If old orchards 

 are plowed, let it ba in June after a good growth of grass or weeds can bo turned under. Follow up 

 by a good harrowing, so that by winter the ground may be again coated by grass and weeds. In 

 short, avoid naked surface as much as possible, and never take away any crop from the surface- 

 Whatever grows, should decay on the ground. 



Mr. J . W. Robsou, of Galena, a member of the Committee on Ornithology, made a. 

 partial report : 



ORNITHOLOGY — REPORT OF COMMITTEE. BY JOHN W. EOBSON, OF GALENA. 



We feel that we are not exactly the person to present a report on this interesting science. Feeling- 

 this, this report shall not be presented if any of the other members of the committee are prepared to- 

 report. None being present, we proceed 



Pleasantly, during the jjast forty years, while actively engaged in the culture of fruit, have we been 

 studying the habits of the various feathered tribjs, and been engaged in noting down the benefits 

 which they confer upon man, and more especially upon the horticulturist. During these long years 

 of toil, struggling for life, and for daily bread, we have read much and observed more on this 

 interesting subject, for we early in life discovered that a large proportion of every crop of grain we 

 sowed, and every fruit tree we planted, was not for ourselves alone, or for the mouths of our 

 children, but for the fly. the bug, the caterpillar, the curculio, the cankerworm, and the endless host 

 of insect enemies that prey upon vegetable life, and mar the hopes of the husbandman. Science is 

 already teaching us not to wage equal war on our insect foes, and the parasite and cannibal insects 

 which prey upon them; and it is cause for rejoicing to every ornithologist, that cultivators of the 

 soil, in every country, are learning from experience that the birds can live without man, but man 

 can not live without the birds. 



Like many of the benefactors of the human race, the birds come in for more than their share of 

 misrepresentation and abuse, and, strange to say, those who traduce their character, call for their 

 destruction (and would proscribe them if they could), bringing against them the charge of theft, 

 are often the very men— the drones in the great human hive- who never planted a strawberry bed, 

 or owned a cherry tree. We seldom hear men complain of their ravages who make their livelihood 

 by growing fruit, but generally by those who seldom see an orchard, or a garden of small fruits, and 

 who never see the products of such but at llie dinner or supper table: and while they are devouring 

 the luscious viands, which never cost them a thought, or one drop of sweat, as far as their culture 

 was concerned, thev raise an outcry against robins and birds in general, as the destroyers of cher- 

 ries and other fruits of pulpy character. We think the charge in question can easily be settled. 

 Cherries have not a season of twelve months; three weeks to a month is the utmost extent of the 

 cherry season. The robin and the golden oriole, the red-headed woodpecker and the brown thrush, 

 the jay and the cat-bird, cannot fast the remaining forty-nine weeks of the year and survive. No. 

 During this long cherryless period they ai-e laboring for man, and that man must l)e mean, sordid 

 and a despot, who would deny them a small quota of those fruits they have labored so fliithfully to 

 preserve from the ravages of insects. 



An investigation of the stomachs of a few of our fruit-eating birds will settle this question conclu- 

 sively. The stomach of a robin in March contains worms, grubs of the tei-restial species of insects, 

 and seeds; April, insects, worms, and grubs; May, the same; June, the same, with the addition of 

 cockchaffers ; July, all sorts of worms, grubs, and fruit; August, the' same; September, larvie and 

 seeds; October, he has left us. The red-headed woodpecker also steals cherries. His stomach in 

 March contains beetles and ants; April, larvas of tree borers and worms; May, ants and their larvaj; 

 June, the same; July, cherries, ants, and caterpillars; August, and the remainder of the year, he 

 exists upon insect life. Anotlier bird which comes under the ban of the destroyer, and which has 

 been proscribed again and again by those who ought to know better, were they not blinded by 

 prejudice, is the Baltimore oriole A close and unprejudiced examination of tliis bird will also 

 show that he, too, is the friend, and not the enemy, of man. In May, his stomach contains bugs. 



