274 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



point ; his labors are all-important from a utilitarian. His work has two 

 objects — to provide a home and food for his offspring, and to support 

 liimself. 



The Baltimore oriole hangs a long basket, neatly woven of silkweed, 

 upon some pendant bough, and it becomes the cradle of future singers. 

 The hermit thrush sets her nest of pine leaves upon the shelving rocks. 

 The wood pewee builds her nest so cunningly, of bits of lichens and 

 similar materials, held together by filaments of cobwebs and worm silk, 

 that it looks like a moss-covered knot upon the tree branch. The 

 warbling vireo weaves a pensile nest in the fork of a twig, and adorns 

 the outside with pendants of worm silk. The woodpecker cuts with his 

 chisel bill a clean room in the heart of a tree. The chimney swift gums 

 his open shallow nest to the inside of a chimney, or on the inner wall of 

 a building. The cliff swallow puts his mud pockets under the eaves of 

 buildings ; he plastered them under cliffs before he found houses so con- 

 venient. The oven bird builds her nest upon the ground in the high, 

 dry woods, and roofs it over with delicate strippings of grape-vine bark. 



The labors of birds, in providing food for their young, are incessant 

 and arduous. When the young are reared in the nest, both parents gener- 

 ally unite in the work, and it is kept up from dawn until dark. Provisions 

 are usually brought as often as once in five minutes. As the smaller 

 birds use insects exclusively, the number consumed by a young brood, in 

 a single day, must be very large. 



The labors of the bird in his own behalf are continued all the year 

 round somewhere. It may be considered a fault that a few species are 

 made with taste refined enough, like ours, to know that some tame fruits 

 are good in the thirsty mid-summer days ;. but how does the account 

 between nature and the smaller birds stand ? All of them are eminently 

 insectivorous during the period of reproduction ; many live exclusively 

 upon insects, while the remainder feed very largely upon them, whenever 

 they can be readily obtained. The birds preserve the trees; they pre- 

 serve the flowers and fruit ; they preserve the grain. Those which love a 

 little of our fruit occasionally are usually among our best helpers against 

 insects. 



When the dark days and the falling snows are here, and nearly all our 

 summer friends are gone, the finches come to claim our winter, and offer 

 us their assistance in keeping down the ever-present weeds, by eating up 

 the seeds. We hear the tinkle of many voices, and see great flights of 

 snow buntings wheel through the air. The snow is often gemmed with 

 the crimson-crowned and crimson-breasted red-polls ; and in some fierce 

 storm there drops down among us the black-legged chestnut-collared 

 Lapland longspur. The evening grosbeak pays us a visit. Once I noted 

 that rare winter red-bird, the white-winged crossbill, dexterously picking 

 out the seeds of the wild sunflower in November. 



A few remarks were made, at the close of the reading of this essay, 

 by the President, and Messrs. Minkler, Galusha, Hatheway and others, 

 advocating the planting of groves and belts of timber, for the combined 



