TWO YOUNG NATURALISTS. 243 



the martin, and the goatsucker hunt on the wing. In 

 the stomachs of eighteen martins killed at different 

 times, the naturalist Florent Prevost, who set himself 

 to make a systematic study of the food of birds, found 

 the remains of six thousand eight hundred and ninety 

 one insects, being about an average of four hundred 



insects for each bird, and that for a single meal. Such 

 figures require no comment. 



"It is difficult to form an idea of the enormous 

 amount of larvee of insects destroyed by small birds 

 such as tits, wrens, warblers, wagtails, fly-catchers, 

 pipits. It. has been calculated that the wren, the tiny 



