312 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



it as an irreparable loss, an aching void in his natural surroundings. He 

 looks at them from the sentimental or romantic point of view. In his 

 mind they have become indissolubly associated with the varied and pleas- 

 ing changes of the seasons ; they usher in the vernal year ; they enliven 

 the summer solstice ; and as they flit silently past, in their changed and 

 plain plumage, on their southward migrations, in the fall of the year, 

 they seem to be in perfect harmony with the falling leaf and the sombre 

 tints of autumn. 



Another man, not necessarily less refined, perhaps, but who may have 

 a somewhat sharper eye to the utilities than to the amenities of life, and 

 who may have turned his attention to the cultivation of some of those 

 smaller and more delicate fruits which are so very tempting to birds, as 

 well as men, or who may have happened to plant his corn field along side 

 some bushy meadow where blackbirds naturally congregate, finding himself 

 much annoyed, and, it may be, seriously damaged by these creatures, 

 regards them in a very different light. If he ever had any partiality for 

 birds it will be likely to become rapidly dissipated ; their charms will be 

 much less apparent. In short, he will regard them as nuisances. 



Let us look at this subject a few moments ; first, in its general aspects, 

 and then narrow down our inquiry to the practical points at issue. Every 

 one knows, in a general way, that birds are one of the great instrumen- 

 talities of nature for keeping in check the various tribes of insects, but 

 no one, who has not examined the subject, is aware of the extent and 

 importance of this agency. Almost all the land birds, except the larger 

 birds of prey, subsist more or less upon insects, and more than half of 

 them live upon insects either chiefly or exclusively. The land birds, 

 with respect to their food, may be divided into three classes, omnivorous, 

 the insectivorous, and the granivorous. The following are the principal 

 omnivorous families : The starlings, the orioles, the black birds, the 

 crows and the jays, the bomby-cillce, or cedar birds, and the titmice. 

 These birds, as a general rule, feed indiscriminately upon berries, seeds 

 and insects. 



The principal insectivorous families are the night-hawks, the swal- 

 lows, the shrikes, the fly-catchers, the sylvix, or warblers, the wrens, the 

 sialietse, or blue birds, the creepers and the woodpeckers. 



All these birds live exclusively, or almost exclusively, upon insects. 

 A few of them are sometimes seen to glean a few ripe berries in their 

 season ; but these instances are exceptional to their ordinary habits. 



The granivorous families are the sparrows or finches, the buntings, 

 the tanagers, the grosbeaks, and the gallinacece, or birds of the poultry 

 kind, including the various kinds of grouse and partridges. It is a note- 

 worthy fact, however, that a large portion of these birds, which are classi- 

 fied as being pre-eminently granivorous, are also largely insectivorous ; 

 and indeed most of them feed their young almost exclusively upon the 

 larvae of insects. 



It is evident, therefore, that in the economy of nature birds are the 

 natural antagonists of insects ; and when we consider what wide devasta- 

 tion a single species of insect will sometimes effect, when it multiplies 



