54 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
cially Jerusalem crickets. This great yellow cricket 
is an inch or two inches long, and he looks as bad as 
he is reported to be, for he wears a suit of clothes with 
brown and yellow stripes, running around, instead of 
up and down in the usual way for stripes. This makes 
one think of a convict or a convict’s suit of clothes. 
Now the shrike, or butcher-bird, does us a great 
favor by making as many meals as he can of these 
great crickets. These crickets are the fellows that dig 
holes in our potatoes while they are in the ground and 
bite the roots off from our pansies and other plants. 
The butcher-bird also eats grasshoppers and _ beetles, 
and other enemies to our roots and grains. So we see 
that he is more our friend than our enemy. 
This bird, which we have all learned to despise so 
much, could teach us a good lesson in his line of work, 
for he is a very merciful and kind butcher. He is in 
the habit of killing his victim quickly, and does not 
hang it up alive on a thorn, as some people think he 
does. He probably fastens his dinner in that way that 
he may pull it to pieces easier and know where to find 
it when he is hungry again. 
The English sparrow! is another bird that has a pad 
name, and he deserves what is said of him more than 
some of the other birds. He is quarrelsome and selfish 
and very unlovable. But in spite of this we have 
sometimes put him to a good use, and have grown to 
1 Passer domesticus, introduced into the United States from Eu- 
rope. 
