82 WAYSIDE SHRUBBERY. 



wild-flowers, instead of roaming in distant fields, where 

 she dares not venture unprotected ? 



On those by-roads where there is but little passing, 

 all kinds of native shrubs are more valuable, as well as 

 more beautiful, than anything that could be put in their 

 place. Especially in the borders of fields near the town 

 are these spontaneous growths, with their grassy turf 

 embossed with wild-flowers, needful for the protection of 

 birds that live in shrubbery, and not in trees, and will not 

 accept the bushes of the garden because they have no 

 tangled undergrowth. Insects, in the different stages of 

 their existence, multiply with the increase of tillage ; for 

 every fertilizer that is mixed with the soil renders it 

 more productive of vermin. Birds, which are the natural 

 checks to the over-multiplication of insects, would be- 

 come more numerous in proportion to the increased sup- 

 ply of their insect food, if there was a harbor for them 

 in the vicinity. A great number of small birds, all of 

 which, not excepting the granivorous species, feed their 

 young with larvae, are exiled by the want of border 

 shrubbery. The catbird, an inveterate consumer of in- 

 sects, second only to the robin in usefulness to the farmer, 

 will become very familiar, and build in our gardens, if 

 supplied with a plenty of wild thicket to yield it that 

 seclusion that suits its temper and habits. Birds of 

 every species prefer a certain description of shrubs or 

 trees for a resort ; and how great soever their supply 

 of food, if no woods or thickets are near to afford them 

 a harbor and a nursery for their young, they will leave 

 it untasted. Any man who owns an acre of land might 

 gather round it nearly every species of our small birds 

 by a very little sacrifice of space, which is to be filled 

 with the wildings of nature. 



A formal clipped hedge-row affords the birds no such 

 shelter nor seclusion. Why an ugly mass of sticks, with 



