the Value of Birds to Man. 97 



Value of the Bird in (Checking Insect Irkuptions. 



The marvellous powers of flight and perception possessed 

 by birds ably fit them to perform the office of a swiftly- 

 moving aerial army, large forces of which can be massed at 

 any given point to correct disturbances caused by abnormal 

 outbreaks of animal or vegetable life. 



When the Mormons first settled in Utah their crops were 

 destroyed utterly by myriads of black crickets that streamed 

 down from the mountains. Promising fields of wheat in the 

 morning were by evening as bare as though the land had not 

 been sown. The first year's crop having been destroyed, the 

 Mormons had sowed seed the second year, and again the crop 

 promised well. But again the crickets appeared, devouring 

 every blade of wheat, and the followers of Joseph Smith were 

 on the verge of starvation. At this juncture Franklin's Gull 

 came by hundreds of thousands, and, feeding greedily on the 

 crickets, freed the fields of the pest. The settlers at Salt 

 Lake regarded the advent of the Gulls as a heaven-sent 

 miracle, and practically canonised the birds. Several times 

 afterwards the crops of the Mormons were attacked by the 

 crickets and were saved by the Gulls. 



In the early days of the colonization of New Zealand 

 swarms of caterpillars infested the open tussock-clad 

 country. When the white man began to cultivate the 

 land this caterpillar disappeared from its old haunts and 

 attacked the English grasses and cereal crops, increasing 

 so enormously in numbers by reason of a more favourable 

 environment that they quickly became a blasting plague. 

 They came not singly, or even in battalions, but in mighty 

 armies, which laid waste the land. I have seen regiments of 

 this invading force cover the pastures in such numbers as to 

 make the green one brown. I have seen them march out of 

 one cornfield — having stripped every stalk bare — cross the 

 road in solid phalanx and pass into another. I have seen big 

 mobs of sheep mustered in hot haste and driven backwards 

 and forwards to crush the atoms with their hurrying feet. 

 I have seen every available horse-roller in a district brought 



