PLEA FOR THE BIRDS. 109 



in general more cultivation than men, are no less de 

 lighted with them. It is a common weakness of men. 

 who are ambitious to seem above every thing that 

 pleases women and children, to affect to despise the 

 singing of a bird or the beauty of a flower. But even 

 those who affect this indifference are not wholly deaf or 

 blind. They are merely ignorant of the influence upon* 

 their own minds of some of the chief sources of our 

 pleasures. 



It is not entirely on account of their song, their 

 beauty, and their interesting habits, that we would set 

 so high a value upon the feathered tribes. They are 

 important in the general economy of nature, without 

 which the operation of her laws would be disturbed, 

 and the parts in the general harmony would be incom 

 plete. As the annihilation of a planet would produce 

 disturbance in the motions of the spheres, and throw 

 the celestial worlds out of their balance, so would the 

 destruction of any species of birds create confusion 

 among terrestrial things. Birds are the chief and almost 

 the only instruments employed by nature for checking 

 the multiplication of insects which otherwise would 

 spread devastation over the whole earth. They are 

 always busy in their great work, emigrating from place 

 to place, as the changes of the seasons cut off their 

 supplies in one country, arid raise them up in another. 

 Some, like the swallow tribe, seize them on the wing, 

 sailing along the air with the velocity of the winds, and 

 preserving it from any excess of the minute species of" 

 atmospheric insects. Others like the creepers and wood 

 peckers penetrate into the wood and bark of trees, and 

 dislodge the larva? before they emerge into the open air- 

 Besides these birds that do their work by day, there are 

 others, like the whippoorwili tribe, that keep their watch. 



10 



