418 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1925 



States Entomological Commission of the seventies did not fail to 

 give due credit to bird enemies of the insect pests it studied, and in 

 the report on the Rocky Mountain locust, gave to the world the most 

 extensive paf)er on the food of birds that had appeared up to that 

 time. The researclies and philosophical writings of Dr. S. A. Forbes, 

 of Illinois, during the eighties earned for him the name of founder of 

 the science of economic ornithology. The Biological Survey which 

 has carried the study of the economic relations of birds farther than 

 has ever been done elsewhere, had its origin as a section of economic 

 ornithology in what then was the Division of Entomolog3\ Al- 

 though this arrangement did not last long, the first two reports pub- 

 lished by the new organization on the food of insectivorous birds 

 contained technical sections on the insect food, written by those emi- 

 nent entomologists, Dr. C. V. Riley, and Dr. E. A. Schwarz. 



Not onlv did entomologists have much to do with the origin and 

 establishment of economic ornithology in this country but their in- 

 terest in the subject has been actively maintained to the present day. 

 References to the value of birds are especially numerous in the writ- 

 ings of the later entomologists, Lintner, Slingerland, and Hewitt, 

 among the deceased, and among the living. Weed, Bruner. Sanderson, 

 Felt, Hopkins, and Chittenden. In Canada Dr. John D. Tothill has 

 been especially active and has published a series of splendid pape 's 

 on the natural control of insects, in every one of which birds have 

 been given great credit. 



In a recent work on the Principles of Insect Control,^ the 

 authors, Messrs, Robert A. Wardle and Philip Buckle, devote an 

 entire chapter to bird encouragement. In summing up the economic 

 status of British birds they state that the " cuckoos, swifts, lap- 

 wings, woodpeckers, and the majority of Passerine birds, particu- 

 larly Paridae (tits), Turdidse (thrushes), Muscicapida? (flycatchers), 

 and Hirundinidae (swallows), are of the utmost value " (p. 61). 



Having by now made the impression, the writer hopes, that eco- 

 nomic ornithology after all is very much an entomological subject, 

 we will proceed to a systematic discussion of the value of birds in 

 insect control. But while so doing we must avoid anthropomorphic 

 reasoning to the effect that birds prey upon this or that insect to 

 assist mankind. On the contrary, whatever they do in the way of 

 feeding upon insects is for reasons entirely their own, but it so hap- 

 pens that in carrying on their customary activities they sometimes 

 do great good in the suppression of insect pests. 



We must remember also that insects are not the sole food of birds 

 but that the birds draw on all the sources of food available to them, 



1 Manchester Univ. Tress, 1923, 295 pp. 



