104 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



ry. An acquaintance of mine who found that his cherries 

 were being taken off very fast by the robins, took his gun one 

 day, and by actual count shot forty robins out of his finest 

 cherry tree. Perhaps we can get along with the robin, if he 

 does enough good to counterbalance the damage he does to 

 our fruit ; but my impression has been, that it is the earth 

 worm, mostly, that the robin chooses. However, it has been 

 claimed that the robin destroys a great many curculios. I 

 would like to ask Prof. Stearns whether examinations of the 

 crop of the robin, from time to time, have shown this to be a 

 fact? 



Prof. Stearns. I cannot say as to that. I have never had 

 any experience with any thing of the kind. But I should 

 think it very probable that it could be so, from the nature of 

 the bird. 



Dr. BowEN. 1 was very glad to have the suliject intro- 

 duced here by Mr. Wetherell of the scientific destruction of 

 birds by unscientific men. In my county, I think the boys 

 destroy more eggs of birds than all the crows in New Eng- 

 land put together. We know how manias spread among boys. 

 There was a time when there was a mania for collecting postage 

 stamps, and now a mania for collecting birds' eggs is spreading 

 among them. I have forbidden boys to cross my farm at all, 

 yet I find them there. I have tried to reason with them, and 

 tried in every way to prevent them robbing birds' nests, but I 

 cannot stop it. I think it the duty of a convention like this is 

 to influence the legislature, as far as they can, to protect birds 

 from all sources of annoyance. As one source of annoyance 

 I will mention the sportsmen who cross our fields continually, 

 from one season to another, evidently for the purpose of shoot- 

 ing game birds, — always out of season. They can-not find any 

 game birds, so they fill their bags with any birds they can 

 find. I think it is the duty of this convention to take some 

 action to influence our legislature to pass a law that will pre- 

 vent this wanton destruction of birds. 



Mr. Sedgwick. Is it a fact that some of our agricultural 

 societies offer premiums for the best collections of birds' 

 eggs ? 



