12 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



their functions. Therefore the undue increase of any one form 

 of vegetable or animal life is prevented by others which feed 

 upon it. 



Birds, because of their telescopic vision and their great pow- 

 ers of flight, fill a place in this great plan which can be filled 

 by no other form of animal life. They perform the functions 

 of an aerial police force, being better able than any other class 

 of animals to concentrate quickly from wide areas upon any 

 unusual destructive outbreak of insects or other animal pests, 

 and reduce it. Such an influence, working on destructive or 

 potentially destructive pests, must have a beneficent relation to 

 agricultural industries, and it is in this way that birds help us. 

 Birds have a marvelous capacity for destroying pests. They 

 are wonderfully active, and tremendously energetic. Their 

 circulation, respiration and digestion are remarkably rapid, for 

 the constant wasting of the tissues calls for exceedingly rapid 

 renewal. Constant fuel is required to keep the vital fires burn- 

 ing brightly. Hence, birds require an enormous amount of 

 food. 



Audubon tells us that a woodcock will consume its own 

 weight in earth worms in one night. This seems rather a large 

 story, but my friend, Herbert K. Job, caught a woodcock and 

 kept it for some time, and he found by experimenting with 

 that bird that in twenty- four hours it ate twice its own weight 

 in earthworms. That seems like a remarkable story, but many 

 years ago Professor Treadwell, of the Boston Society of 

 Natural History, procured, for experimental purposes, some 

 young robins fully fledged and just ready to fly. He fed the 

 little birds all he thought was good for them, but at the end of 

 a few days one of them died, and upon examination he found 

 that it had starved to death. Upon this, he fed the survivors 

 more and more until they had all that they seemed to require, 

 and he found that each one of these young birds needed about 

 65 per cent more than its own weight in solid beef every day, 

 or fourteen feet in length of caterpillars or earthworms. Many 

 experiments of this kind have been made since then and they 

 fully corroborate those of Professor Treadwell. If a man were 

 to consume food in that proportion, he would eat in one day 

 67 feet of bologna sausage three inches in diameter. 



