MISCELLANEOUS £>APERS. 415 



precious little songsters that so delight us are eating the poisoned in- 

 sects and picking it up on foliage and bark and are rapidly being sent 

 'where the good birdies go," and we turn longingly to the chemists and 

 inquire if something cannot be produced that will kill the insects and 

 spare our feathered friends. 



Who is prepared to say the clover insects, scale and weevil and a 

 long list of injurious insects once unknown to us, but now so general, 

 are not the direct result of this wholesale distribution of poison ? We 

 cannot stop spraying. We have gone too far, and what the birds for- 

 merly so gladly and freely did for us (so much better than we can 

 possibly do) we must now do ourselves. In conclusion I will say, at 

 last there has been found a use for that much abused little English 

 sparrow. He is to worm our cabbage in the future. 



Carrie E. Howell, Springfield, Mo. 



Ornamental Planting. 



"At the November meeting of the Summit (O.) county horticul- 

 tural society, the committee on ornamental planting urged the more 

 general planting of ornamental windbreaks for winter protection from 

 prevailing winds," writes L. B. Pierce in Ohio Farmer. " Evergreens 

 of small size could be purchased cheaply, and they soon grow to be a 

 very striking and beautiful picture in the winter landscape. Very 

 great comfort could be obtained for man and beast by planting groups 

 so they would shut off the prevailing winter winds, which by their 

 evaporating power lowered the temperature of living beings below the 

 actual reading of the thermometer. He had visited a celebrated place 

 near Boston, one raw autumnal day, and seen in the enclosure of arbor 

 vitse, children playing and nurse girls wheeling children, in perfert com- 

 fort, when overcoats were a luxury outside. There was hardly a breath 

 of air in the play-ground with its evergreen protection, and the sun 

 shone in on the clean gravel and green grass, and gave the climate 

 more like Virginia than Boston at that'time of year. There were several 

 fine examples of valuable windbreaks in Summit county, and one had 

 but to visit them on a bleak winter day and stand within their protec- 

 tion to be convinced that they were a very valuable improvement to 

 any exposed home. At the Portage county meeting a week later, the 

 same committee called attention to the value of some native trees and 

 shrubs for autumn and winter decoration. We had a number of these 

 with either showy bark or berries, that were at their best after flowers 

 were killed by frost. One of the most beautiful though old-fashioned, 



