804 BIRDS OF FIELD, FORES T AND PARK 



brown-tail or gypsy moth as though swept by 

 fire, or a deciduous forest stripped clean of every 

 vestige of green, transformed as it were to the 

 nakedness of winter, you have some idea of the 

 serious character of damage wrought by insects. 

 The boll weevil of the cotton fields has caused 

 such destruction that throughout whole sections 

 rich lands have been abandoned or turned to 

 some other crop. It has been estimated that the 

 damage done to crops by insects throughout the 

 United States in a single year reaches the en- 

 ormous sum of ^800,000,000. This is no idle esti- 

 mate, but has been arrived at after painstaking 

 research extending over a series of years, and 

 most careful computation. Truly, a destruction 

 of such magnitude deserves, even commands, the 

 earnest attention of all thoughtful persons. 



In this connection certain estimates made by 

 ornithologists and other scientists of state and 

 Federal departments of agriculture relative to the 

 value of the service rendered by birds in meeting 

 this evil are of prime interest. The keen appe- 

 tites of young birds are well known, it being 

 thought probable that the consumption of the 

 bird's own weight in food per day is not an 

 unusual occurrence. This very likely means in 

 the case of the insect-eating birds that a single 

 brood consumes from three hundred to one thou- 

 sand insects in a single day. Chester K. Reed, 

 the well known ornithologist, estimated that in 

 Massachusetts alone birds destroy twenty-one 

 thousand bushels of insects daily from May to 

 September. In Nebraska a naturalist estimates 

 that the daily consumption of insects at the 



