1883.] UTILITY OF BIRDS IN AGRICULTUEE. 101 



the crow there is no enlargement of this passage, but every- 

 thing passes directly into the gizzard, and there it is digested. 



Now, as to their eating corn. I have raised corn and 

 watched them closely, and been on the field in less than a 

 minute after the crows had left it, and found that they had 

 pulled the corn, hill after hill, marching from one hill to the 

 other ; but not until the corn had got softened and had come 

 up would they molest it. Also, in the fall, they will come in 

 droves on to a field of corn, where it is in stacks, and will go 

 on to the stacks in dozens, and there they will pick into the 

 husks and pick out the corn and put it into their gizzards. 

 They are very predaceous too, in regard to young birds. An 

 apple tree near my barn-yard had a nest of young robins. 

 Happening to be at the barn, I heard the old robins making 

 a great ado, and looking at this tree, saw a crow in the 

 branches. Presently another one came, and when the second 

 one came, they raided upon the nest, and each one took a 

 young robin by the neck, and dangled it in the air as they 

 flew. I have also, in my rides along what you call, "the 

 meadows" near the Connecticut river, seen some crows at 

 work in the bank where the bank swallows made their nests, 

 and, stopping my horse, and calling my companion's attention 

 to it, we saw that one of those crows was digging its way 

 into the bank, and absolutely flew away with some of the 

 young birds in its bill. Yet they are great scavengers. In 

 the spring, they get a great many insects and moths from the 

 ground, after the furrow has been turned by the agriculturist, 

 and do a great deal in picking up those large white grubs, 

 with red heads, that do so much destruction in our mowing 

 fields sometimes. • 



Cut-worms travel in the night, as every tobacco »man 

 knows, if he has watched them. They never travel in the 

 day time ; but at night, if you will take a lantern and go 

 quietly into your tobacco field, when the tobacco plants have 

 begun to grow, you will find these cut-worms traveling on the 

 surface of the ground. They come out and go at the plant 

 and do their mischief, crawling up an inch or two to get 



