128 HIS RELATIONS WITH US 
Besides the work they do for us in destroying 
animal life, their seed-eating is almost as useful. 
As I said, they eat the seeds of weeds that 
farmers and gardeners are all the time laboring 
to keep down, so that useful plants may have 
a chance to grow. 
The whole family of finches, sparrows, bunt- 
ings, grosbeaks, and all birds with the high, 
thick bill, though they eat largely of insects 
through the summer, and feed their nestlings on 
them, when insects get scarce and weed seeds 
are ripe, they turn to them for food. They eat 
the seeds of all kinds of troublesome weeds ; and 
as each single seed might produce a plant, we 
cannot guess how much they destroy. 
Professor Beal, who is at the head of this gov- 
ernment inquiry into the food of birds, and who 
knows what he is talking about, says that one 
species of little bird —the tree sparrow — de- 
stroys every year in one of the Western States, 
many tons of the seeds of weeds. | 
There is a curious and interesting fact about 
this seed-eating. The regular seed-eaters, the 
finches, prefer the seeds of weeds that are 
mostly harmful, and these they break up, taking 
off the shells, and of course destroying the germ, 
making it impossible for them to grow. 
But there are many birds who eat berries hav- 
