STATE POMOLOGICAE SOCIETY. 6l 



food in and under the bark. In a twenty-five year study of 

 birds I never saw one on the ground or on the tips of the 

 branches. His whole anatomy is adapted to the Hfe he leads; 

 toes four, two in front and two behind, long, strong, and flexible, 

 and each armed with a strong curved claw ; legs strong, and a 

 tail fitted to serve as a fulcrum to give added strength to his 

 blows ; tongue, the most wonderful of nature's work in its 

 adaptability to its uses, capable of being extended almost indefi- 

 nitely, its point armed with a barbed spear-like tip for probing 

 and bringing forth from the bottom of the opening cut by his 

 chisel bill, any larva disclosed therein. 



Search your orchard for samples of his work. Examine the 

 bark scales he has pecked into. Remove them and find the 

 empty cocoon beneath. If you find scales with living pupae 

 under them, you have not woodpeckers enough to take care of 

 your trees. Carry home with you some of these bark scales 

 that have been treated by the downy. Next May or June col- 

 lect an equal number of adult moths and kill with cyanide or 

 chloroform. Next summer lay beside the empty cocoons and 

 dead moths an equal number of wormy apples cut open so as to 

 show the ravages of the insect in its larval stage; if possible, 

 put with them an equal number of small green apples each one 

 with a flat, oval, scale-like egg upon it, and learn a lesson of 

 "Insects, Birds, and Fruit," that will make you and your pos- 

 terity the everlasting friends of the downy woodpecker. If 

 you are not yet convinced of the utility of the downy, solve this 

 simple problem in arithmetic. If a codling moth lays 80 eggs, 

 (the average number is 85) on 80 apples, and half of these eggs 

 develop females, and each of these lays 80 eggs, how many dol- 

 lars worth of apples, at fifty cents per bushel, reckoning 150 

 apples in a bushel, will one codling moth and her progeny 

 destroy in one season? When you have found the answer to 

 be five and one-half dollars, just consider how much each downy 

 is saving for you, provided he eats only one larva per day for 

 only one month. 



Were the codling moth the only injurious insect destroyed by 

 this bird, we should owe him a debt of gratitude for this work 

 alone. But there are other hidden enemies tunnelling in the 

 wood itself such as the round-headed apple borers, wood-boring 

 ants, wood-eating beetles, the birch borer, the maple borer, and 



