306 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



about as nearly right as similar claims set up in favor of quadrupeds would be. 

 Generally a tirade of abuse meets any farmer who undertakes to protect him- 

 self against birds, or even writes disrespectfully of the doings of the feath- 

 ered race. "Fool" and "brute" are the best epithets he is likely to escape 

 with. Nevertheless we are obliged to exterminate rats, mice, squirrels, foxes, 

 wolves and bears, and fruit-growers find that none of these do more damage 

 to property than birds of various species. 



The "sap-sucker" is an unmistakable nuisance. Yet there is good reason 

 to think he is not rightly named. There is no evidence that he sucks the sap 

 of the trees whose bark he perforates. I have held the opinion that he lives 

 upon the inner bark, which I have never found upon the ground beneath the 

 trees where I have seen him at work, but which is found in his crop. Kecently 

 several observers (Rev. Henry Fairbanks of St. Johnsbury, Vt., being one of 

 them) have advanced the opinion, based upon observation, that these holes are 

 made for the purpose of attracting insects npon which the bird feeds. This 

 would seem to argue an incredible amount of intelligence, yet it is stated as an 

 actural fact of observation by Mr. F. and other observers that the "sap- 

 sucker" really makes his rounds from one freshly pecked tree to another to 

 secure the insects which are attracted by the juices exuding from the wounds 

 he has made. 



FACTS ABOUT THE WRENS. 



A correspondent of the American Naturalist tells some pleasant facts about 

 wrens which we gladly reproduce in the Portfolio : 



The observations I have been able to make daring a residence of several 

 years on a farm have convinced me that the common house wren is really one 

 of our most valuable birds, not, perhaps, from what they have done, but from 

 the possibilities wrapped up in their diminutive bodies. They are quite as 

 social as tlie purple martin or the bluebird, and greatly surpass either of these 

 in the rapidity with which they increase. I began several years ago to provide 

 them with nesting places in the vicinity of my buildings. Sometimes I 

 fastened the skull of a horse or ox, or a small box, in a tree-top. But latterly 

 I have made it a practice every spring to obtain tliirty or forty cigar boxes for 

 this purpose. If the box is long and large, I put a partition across the middle, 

 and make a hole through into each apartment. It is very seldom that these 

 boxes are not occupied by one of these little families. In most instances two 

 broods are annually reared in each nesting-place. One of my boxes last season 

 turned out three broods of young wrens — six little, hungry birds #ach time, or 

 eighteen in all ! I think a cigar box never before did better duty. The 

 lamented Kobert Kennicott stated that a single pair of wrens carried to their 

 young about a thousand insects in a single day! Like all young, rapidly- 

 growing birds, they are known to be voracious eaters, living entirely upon 

 insects. The point upon which most stress may be laid is this: Tliat 

 providing them with nesting-places in our gardens, orchards, or grounds, and 

 not allowing them to be cauglit by cats or scared away by mischievous boys, 

 ■we may have scores, if not hundreds, of them about us during most of the 

 time in which insects are destructive. They undoubtedly return to the same 

 localities year after year. Last season I had up about thirty of these nesting- 



