266 In Touch with Nature. 



bly, in Indian times, or when the country was 

 heavily forested, such birds as the red-wing and 

 grakles or crow-blackbirds were really less nu- 

 merous than now ; and that the extensive cultiva- 

 tion of corn had to do with their increase and 

 favored the flocking instinct. This is an error. 

 Writing of crow-blackbirds, or " maize-thieves," 

 as he says the Swedes called the familiar purple 

 grakle, Kalm states of those he saw in New Jer- 

 sey : " They are very bold ; for, when disturbed, 

 they only go and settle in another part of the 

 field. . . . They fly in incredible swarms in 

 autumn ; and it can hardly be conceived whence 

 such immense numbers of them should come. 

 When they rise in the air they darken the sky and 

 make it look quite black. They are then in such 

 great numbers and so close together that it is sur- 

 prising how they find room to move their wings." 

 This was in 1749, when the amount of cleared 

 ground and acreage of corn was not greater than 

 in the palmy days of Indian supremacy, for Kalm 

 was mistaken about Indian agriculture, and the 

 statement, " they planted but little maize," is mis- 

 leading. If small, their fields were numerous, and 



