23 



presence of large flocks of these black police in parts of the in- 

 fested districts. 1 



The Australian correspondence of the Mark Lane Express of 

 March 7, 1892, speaks of the value to the farmers of ibises and 

 other birds during the locust invasions of that year in the Glen 

 Thompson district near Ballarat, Victoria. A swarm of locusts 

 was noted in a paddock, and when it was feared that all the 

 sheep would have to be sold for lack of grass, flocks of starlings, 

 spoonbills and cranes appeared and destroyed the locusts so 

 completely that only about 40 acres of grassland were ravaged. 2 



Similar services were performed by birds in the western 

 United States during the great locust visitations that followed 

 the settlement of the States in the Mississippi valley. When 

 these tremendous irruptions of locusts appeared, practically all 

 birds, from the tiny kinglet to the great whooping crane, fed 

 upon them. Professor Samuel Aughey, who investigated the 

 food of these locust-eating birds, noted many localities where 

 the crops (or a part, at least) were saved by the work of flocks 

 of birds which gathered there to feed on the locusts. Birds 

 were effective even where, as in one case, the locusts had 

 hatched to the number of 300 to the square foot. In 1869, in 

 one instance, more than 90 per cent of the insects were de- 

 stroyed by birds. At Fremont, Nebraska, S. E. Goodman found 

 that the locusts came up "much thicker" than the wheat, but 

 he said that the birds reduced them so that he got two-thirds 

 of a crop, and he asserted that other farmers had a similar ex- 

 perience. In some cases the sprouting wheat was eaten clean 

 to the ground, but flocks of blackbirds came, destroyed the 

 locusts, and the wheat sprang up again and made a good crop. 

 Page after page of the first report of the United States Entomo- 

 logical Commission was devoted to testimony of this kind. 



The commissioners themselves say that "the ocular demon- 

 stration of the usefulness of birds was so full and complete 

 during the past year that it was impossible to entertain any 

 longer a doubt upon this point." 3 



1 Cobb, N. A.: The Common Crow, Miscellaneous Publication No. 103, Department of Agri- 

 culture, New South Wales, 1896, pp. 10-12. 



* Insect Life, Vol. IV, 1891-92, p. 409. 



Riley, Packard and Thomas: First Report, United States Entomological Commission, 1877. 

 pp. 335-342. 



