FEEDING OF THE YOUNG. 163 
labour of love for twelve or thirteen hours in the 
day! The space they pass over in their various 
transits and returns must be very great, and the 
calculation vague; yet, from some rude observa- 
tions, it appears probable that this pair in conjunc- 
tion do not travel less than fifty miles in the day, 
visiting and feeding their young about a hundred 
and forty times, which, consisting of five in num- 
ber, and admitting only one to be fed each time, 
every bird must receive in this period eight-and- 
twenty portions of food or water! This excessive 
labour seems entailed upon most of the land-birds, 
except the gallinaceous tribes and some of the ma- 
rine birds, which toil with infinite perseverance in 
fishing for their breeds; but the very precarious 
supply of food to be obtained in dry seasons by the 
terrestrial birds, renders theirs a labour of more un- 
remitting hardship than that experienced by the 
piscivorous tribes, the food of which is probably 
little influenced by season, while our poor land- 
birds find theirs to be nearly annihilated in some 
cases.”* 
There cannot be any question of the immense 
numbers of insects required during the breeding 
season. An instance of this is mentioned by Bing- 
ley, with regard to some small American bird, 
which he calls a creeper (Certhza), but which we 
suspect to be more probably the house-wren (An- 
orthura AEdon). ‘‘ From observing,” he says, “its 
utility in destroying insects, it has long been a cus- 
tom with the inhabitants of many parts of the Uni- 
ted States to fix a small box at the end of a pole, 
in gardens and about houses, as a place jor it to 
build in. In these boxes the animals form their 
nests and hatch their young ones, which the parent 
birds feed with a variety of different insects, par- 
ticularly those species that are injurious in gar- 
* Journal of a Naturalist, p. 198, 3d edition. 
