1220 The Cornell Reading-Courses 



early fruits and vegetables are then ready to be harvested, and perhaps the 

 larger part of them marketed; and the coins received for the first picking 

 of strawberries or for the earliest " mess of peas " seem to have a pleas- 

 anter chink than those in the fuller purse gained from the later abundance. 

 Weeds of many kinds have sprung up and must be studied to learn the best 

 means of getting rid of them ; drought may come, with its problem of irrigation 

 or mulching or continual surface tillage to conserve soil moisture ; plants 

 or green fruits that are crowded for growth must be severely thinned — 

 a hard lesson for children, who cannot bear to throw away the plants they 

 have tended; but if they are taught that the resulting crop will be much 

 finer for the loss, and also that the thinnings may be used to help the 

 growth of pigs or chickens, they may begin to see some of the advantages 

 of diversified farming. 



Summer study of birds and their nestlings 



Many of the birds that are persecuted and destroyed by the farmer 

 and the farmer's boys because of their liking for the berries and cherries 

 to which the farmer thinks he has exclusive right, are so truly useful as 

 destroyers of noxious insects and weed seeds that if their habits were more 

 closely studied it would be seen that they really earn the right to a share 

 of the fruit in its season. Most birds feed their young on " soft meat," 

 which is composed almost entirely of insects and their larvae, and a nestful 

 of hungry, growing birdlings eat more than their parents do; many nest- 

 lings are said to consume more than their own weight in food each 

 day, during the time of attaining their growth and their covering of 

 feathers. But the grown birds also are insect eaters: robins keep as 

 plump as aldermen all through the spring and early summer on the 

 grubs and wonns that they dig from the ground; the beautiful rose- 

 breasted grosbeak has earned the name of the " potato-bug bird " 

 because of his fondness for those insect pests; goldfinches are " thistle 

 birds " because they build their nests of thistledown and eat the seeds 

 of the pernicious thistle; the warblers spend their restless days in 

 searching the trees for insects and for their eggs and larvae, to feed 

 their nestlings and themselves. Even the larger birds, such as the 

 hawks and the owls, do far more good than harm: most of the casts 

 scattered at the foot of the owl's roosting tree contain the bones and 

 fur of field mice, moles, and other vermin; the sparrow hawk would 

 better be named the grasshopper hawk, so tireless is he in hunting grass- 

 hoppers, nighthawks and whippoorwills and little brown bats live on 

 the night-flying beetles and moths, m.ost of which are a damage to the 

 farmer in either adult or larval stage. 



