GEOGRAPHICAL IMPORTANCE OF BIRDS. wl Bal 
Geographical Importance of Birds. 
Wild birds form of themselves a very conspicuous and inter- 
esting feature in the staffage, as painters call it, of the natural 
landscape, and they are important elements in the view we are 
taking of geography, whether we consider their immediate or 
their incidental influence. Birds affect vegetation directly by 
sowing seeds and by consuming them; they affect it indirectly 
by destroying insects injurious, or, in some cases, beneficial to 
vegetable life. Hence, when we kill a seed-sowing bird, we 
check the dissemination of a plant ; when we kill a bird which 
digests the seed it swallows, we promote the increase of a vege- 
table. Nature protects the seeds of wild, much more effectually 
than those of domesticated plants. The cereal grains are com- 
pletely digested when consumed by birds, but the germ of the 
smaller stone fruits and of very many other wild vegetables is 
uninjured, perhaps even stimulated to more vigorous growth, 
by the natural chemistry of the bird’s stomach. The power of 
flight and the restless habits of the bird enable it to transport 
heavy seeds to far greater distances than they could be carried 
by the wind. A swift-winged bird may drop cherry stones a 
thousand miles from the tree they grow on; a hawk, in tearing 
Williams, in his History of Vermont, i., p. 149, records such a case of the in- 
crease of trout. In a pond formed by damming asmail stream to obtain 
water power for a sawmill, and covering one thousand acres of primitive 
forest, the increased supply of food brought within reach of the fish multi- 
plied them to that degree, that, at the head of the pond, where, in the spring, 
they crowded together in the brook which supplied it, they were taken by the 
hands at pleasure, and swine caught them without difficulty. A single sweep 
of a small scoopnet would bring up half a bushel, carts were filled with them 
as fast as if picked up on dry land, and in the fishing season they were com- 
monly sold at a shilling (eightpence halfpenny, or about seventeen cents) 
a bushel. The increase in the size of the trout was as remarkable as the 
multiplication of their numbers. 
The construction of dams and mills is destructive to many fish, but operates 
as a protection to their prey. The mills on Connecticut River greatly dimin- 
ished the number of the salmon, but the striped bass, on which the salmon 
feeds, multiplied in proportion.—Dr. Dwient, Zravels, vol. ii., p. 325. 
