FOEEST CONSEEVATOEIES. 



IF we would preserve our forests, we must also, in about 

 the same ratio, preserve the wild birds and animals that 

 inhabit them. The woods are their houses ; and nature 

 has given them instincts and appetites that cannot be 

 indulged, except by their performance of the very acts 

 which are necessary to save their houses from destruction. 

 While the woodpecker draws the larva from its cylindri- 

 cal burrow, and while the bluebird seizes the beetle or 

 the caterpillar that produces this larva, they preserve the 

 trees in a sound and healthy condition by destroying 

 those insects which, if they multiplied without any such 

 check, would soon cause the entire forest to perish. But 

 the birds, by their consumption of insects, are no more 

 serviceable in the economy of the forest than by planting 

 the seeds of the trees. As planters of the forest the small 

 quadrupeds are as useful as the birds. There is not, in- 

 deed, an animal of any tribe, family, or species, which, if 

 it be a consumer of fruit, is not also a planter of the vege- 

 table that bears it. They all possess some kind of an 

 instinct or habit that leads to this result. The jay and 

 the squirrel, for example, constantly hoard nuts and grain, 

 and, by hoarding, they plant that portion which they do 

 not afterwards discover. The frugivorous birds distribute 

 the seeds of all kinds of pulpy fruit as equally over the 

 earth as it could be done by an artificial process. Even 

 the grouse and the wild turkey are sowers of the grain 

 that constitutes their food, by scratching a considerable 

 portion of it into the soil. 



