ECONOMIC VALUE OF OUR BIRDS 57 



make a specialty of the weevil, while others take it 

 incidentally, in the course of each day's work. The 

 list is far too long to quote in full, but to show the 

 gallant manner in which a great number of bird 

 families, and orders also, are endeavoring to do 

 their part in the weevil warfare, we will offer a few 

 items from the list. We notice the following 

 species: six orioles, six sparrows, one goatsucker, 

 one martin, five swallows, and various fly-catchers, 

 wrens, blackbirds, the killdeer plover, titlark, 

 meadow-lark and quail. Of these birds, the martin, 

 swallows and nighthawk capture the weevils while 

 they are flying high in the air; the song-birds take 

 them from the cotton plants, and the quail and 

 meadow-lark glean them near the ground. A 

 farmer of Beeville, Texas, once reported as fol- 

 lows : "The bob- whites shot in this vicinity had their 

 crops filed with the boll- weevils." Another Texas 

 farmer reported his "cotton-fields full of quail, and 

 an entire absence of weevils." 



And yet, in spite of all this, I received not long 

 since, from Texas, a photograph showing a large 

 automobile almost concealed from end to end by a 

 thick mantle of dead quail. 



For a change of scenery, let us glance for a 

 moment at the bird enemies of the codling-moth, 

 the greatest destroyer of northern apples. This list 

 of thirty-six species also shows a great variety of 

 birds on one particular firing-line, in which several 

 different orders and thirteen families are repre- 



