8 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
is incomplete, if not only its personal capabilities for 
evil be ended, but also its power of giving rise toa 
future generation, all with equally great mischievous 
capacities and reproductive powers of their own, the 
service rendered by the bird in that one act counter- 
balances a long list of the losses which the farmer 
may suffer from its own occasional thefts. 
And the immense majority of the insects killed by 
birds ave killed before the great aim and object of 
their existence is achieved. For the provision for a 
future generation, in the insect world, is in nearly 
every instance followed by almost immediate death, 
so that an insect slain while carrying on its ordinary 
avocations is presumably an insect which has not 
laid its eggs; while, in the case of the eggs them- 
selves, the grubs, and the pupz, all of which are 
largely devoured by birds, there can, of course, be 
no possible doubt upon the subject. 
And there are very few birds indeed whose diet 
does not consist in some degree of insects and other 
injurious creatures; while, even by the exceptional 
few which are strictly vegetarian, and thus apparently 
hostile throughout their entire existence, so large an 
amount of wild seeds is devoured, more especially of 
such troublesome weeds as the groundsel, the thistle, 
the dandelion, the cherlock, and the many others which 
disfigure and exhaust cultivated soil, that agriculture 
is benefited in one way by the very creatures which 
injure it in another. Even the wood-pigeon itself, in 
whose behalf it is difficult to say a word, takes its 
share in this branch of the good work, and com- 
