82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



its mouth. We will also suppose that both birds alternate in their 

 visits, and that this is kept up from sunlight to sunset, or a day of 

 say fifteen hours, for the period of being cared for, or say twenty- 

 one days, usually the time required for a brood to begin to feed 

 themselves, let us look at the result. One single nesting of a 

 single pair of birds will have consumed the enormous amount of 

 nearly 500,000 insects in this short time. As 1 have often known 

 of several hundred of nests being attached to the buildings of a 

 single farmer, while several farmers often live quite close together, 

 it is safe to say that the benefit these birds do is simply incalculable. 

 Let us look still further: The swallows and the bluebirds fight 

 for the boxes which it used to be a great fashion to put up in 

 various places for their reception. Formerly the swallows re- 

 tained undisputed possession. Latterly, the insect-enemies to all 

 the fruit and garden trees and plants began to increase; the 

 swallows, never staying near the houses to catch their food, were 

 beaten and driven off to the barns where they belong and from 

 whence they continue their raids upon the grain fields, while their 

 conquerors took possession of the boxes, built, and reared their 

 young, getting tamer and more abundant each year, until now 

 they build anywhere they can find a suitable location, be it in the 

 holes of the corner pieces of the house piazzas themselves even. 

 They at once attack the insects about the lawn, and do for the 

 fruit and shade trees what the swallows do for the field, but each 

 jn his proper place. Still again : The purple martins, for a time, 

 contended with the bluebirds for the boxes. The martins are an 

 indolent set, and, though insect-eating birds, fi,y high to catch their 

 food. So, as they were unable to take the place of the Bluebirds 

 in Nature's economy, they were whipped and sent off to seek for 

 themselves other regions where they belonged. The result is that 

 in New England to-day the martin is comparatively a rare bird, 

 except in one or two especial localities where they are especially 

 protected by the dwellers there. Do I wrongly place these illus- 

 trations as a fair sample of what I mean by the economy of birds 

 in agriculture? But I have only given a most common and 

 general example, and one that will be readily understood, in 

 fact, a most simple one. Let us take another, and one that will 

 combine in a measure the answer to a previous question. Form- 

 erly, and even to a great extent latterly, the king-bird or bee 

 martin, as it is better known to farmers keeping these latter insects 



