FACTS THAT PROVE THE UTILITY OF BIRDS. 259 



pened in other countries, and ought to convince any 

 reasoning mind that all the native species of insectivo- 

 rous birds are needful, and that one or any number of 

 species cannot perform the work which would have been 

 done by the species that is extirpated. 



" An aged man " of Virginia remarks, in " The Southern 

 Planter" of 1860, that since his boyhood there has been a 

 rapid decrease in the numbers of birds and a proportional 

 increase of insects. Since their diminution great ravages 

 have been committed on the farmers' crops by clover 

 worms, wire-worms, cut- worms, and on the wheat crops 

 particularly by chinch-bugs, Hessian flies, joint-worms, 

 and other pests. All this is owing, he thinks, to the 

 destruction and the scarcity of birds. He alludes par- 

 ticularly to the diminution of woodpeckers as a public 

 calamity. He has known a community of red-headed 

 woodpeckers to arrest the destructive progress of borers 

 in a pine forest. He mentions the flicker or widgeon 

 woodpecker — a common bird in New England — as the 

 only bird he ever saw pulling out grubs from the roots of 

 peach-trees. ]\Iay not this habit of the flicker, which is 

 a very shy bird because he is hunted for his flesh, be 

 the cause why apple-trees that grow near a wood are not 

 affected by borers ? 



The alarming increase of grasshoppers in some parts of 

 the Western States, is undoubtedly the consequence of 

 the wholesale destruction of quails, grouse, and other 

 birds in that region. 



