222 SOME SOUTH INDIAN INSECTS. ETC. 'CHAP. XXIII. 



Various small jungle rats, the leopard and tiger need not 

 be more than mentioned here. All are often very destructive to 

 domestic animals of various kinds and the ordinary methods of 

 shikar are the only ones applicable to their control. 



Monkeys of various species are also sufficiently familiar and in 

 many districts do considerable damage to crops and gardens, being 

 Looked una-, sacred and not to be interfered with, although the 

 cultivators, averse to killing the monkeys themselves, sometimes 

 find their pilfering such a loss that they will beg foreigners to do 

 this for them. 



Of all vertebrate animals, however. Birds are the most important 

 from an agricultural point of view and it is probable that, if birds 

 were wholly absent in Southern India, it would prove impossible 

 to grow crops on account of the damage by insect pests. It is not 

 generally realized what an enormous number of insects arc- 

 destroyed in the course of a year by every individual of an 

 insectivorous species of bird, such as a Mynah, which hunts 

 systematically for its food during almost every moment of daylight. 

 On the other hand some birds are distinctly injurious to crops. 

 feeding entirely on fruit or grain, and others, which are beneficial 

 by feeding on insects during part of the year, turn their attention 

 to crops when these art' ripe. Not even all the purely insectivorous 

 birds are necessarily useful, as their food may consist of useful or 

 beneficial insects. So that every different kind of bird must be 

 judged on its merits from the point of view of whether it is useful 

 or noxious to the agriculturist, our opinions of the value of each 

 species being based solely on actual records of its food and 

 feeding-habits. A bird that eats injurious insects is itself beneficial 

 and vice versa, and a bird which does good most of the year is not 

 necessarily to be condemned as injurious because it occasionally 

 does some harm. An occasional lapse from virtue need not be 

 construed as a permanent divergence from the straight and narrow 

 way ; the good and the harm have to be balanced together and a 

 general average struck. So far as agriculture is concerned there 

 are practically only two classes to be considered, birds that feed 

 on insects and those which eat grain, and the beneficial birds in 

 the first class far outweigh in numbers and importance the injurious 

 birds in the second class. 



Practically nothing is on record of the actual food of birds in 

 Southern India ; what scanty field-notes exist have been collected 

 by Mr. Mason in his memoir on the "Food of Birds in India" 

 (Agri. Dept., Entom. Series, Vol. Ill), but the original work in this 

 relates solely to one small district in Bihar and the number of 

 observations is too small to be satisfactory. Feeding-habits may 



