78 BIRD FRIENDS 



adult birds, and those eaten by the young birds after 

 leaving the nest. The amount eaten by the young 

 after leaving the nest and by the adults in a month 

 would doubtless equal the amount required to feed 

 the young for a half -month in the nest. This would 

 make a monthly total of about 2,000,000,000,000 

 insects destroyed by birds on the farms of the east- 

 ern United States, or for the summer season about 

 10,000,000,000,000 insects. 



If these insects averaged an inch in length and 

 were placed end to end, they would make a proces- 

 sion 160,000,000 miles long, which, if it were to 

 travel at the rate of a mile a minute, would require 

 three hundred years to pass any given point. This 

 would reach to the sun and almost back again; it 

 would reach the moon and return three hundred 

 times ; it would encircle the earth sixty -four hundred 

 times. If the insects were placed side by side one 

 inch apart they would make a band fifty feet wide 

 extending to the moon, and would form a belt five 

 hundred feet wide extending all the way around the 

 earth. These insects, if placed an inch apart each 

 way would form a sheet that would completely cover 

 the State of Delaware. 



Control of outbreaks of insects. One feature of 

 birds that makes them such a successful check upon 

 insects is their power of flight. Wherever insects are 

 found in unusually large numbers, there birds 

 quickly gather to prey upon them. When the Mor- 



