CIVILIZING INFLUENCES. 1395 
rect benefit to the little birds. It is not difficult to demon- 
strate this. 
Birds naturally choose sunny spots in which to build 
their nests, such as some little glade on the bank of a 
stream; when roads were cut and fields levelled in the 
midst of sombre woods, the area suitable for nesting was 
of course greatly added to, and a better chance thus afford- 
ed for successfully hatching and rearing broods of young. 
The way in which the wood-roads cut by the hemlock bark- 
peelers throngh the dense forests that clothe the remote 
Catskills have become the haunt of birds and insects, is a 
capital example in urging this point. One of the largest 
avian families—that of the sparrows, finches, and buntings 
—subsists almost exclusively on seeds of weeds and grasses ; 
and the members of a large proportion of other families de- 
pend somewhat for their daily supply on this sort of food. 
Under the universal shade of trees weeds can grow only 
sparingly, and on prairies the crop is often killed by 
drought, or is burnt in the autumn; but the cultivation 
of immense fields of grain and hay, and the making of 
vroad pastures and half-worn roads, which almost imme- 
diately become filled with weeds, has furnished the birds 
with an inexhaustible and unfailing harvest. 
Birds suffer much harm from many quadrupeds—foxes, 
