BIRDS AND REPOET OF COMMITTEE. 3 



beautiful, and many of tliem excellent as food 

 for man, and the few birds which are cannibals 

 and eat each other, every mouthful which a bird 

 eats may almost be said to be either an insect 

 or a seed, so when we have protected the seeds 

 which w^e value they are incessantly destroying 

 either a farmer's and gardener's live enemies or 

 the weeds which clog his ground. 



Few people have owned the smallest garden 

 without finding out the cruel damage which 

 many sorts of grubs and insects commit. Many of 

 the gentlemen who appear before this Committee 

 give most interesting information about insects, 

 their depredations, their powers of reproduction, 

 &c. Mr. Groome Napier tells us, ' Some, such 

 as the white ant, lay 40,000,000 eggs, laying 

 them at the rate of 60 a minute. Alegrodes 

 proletella lays 200,000, a species of mutilla 

 80,000 a day. The queen of the hive bee is 

 capable of laying 50,000 in a season ; the 

 female wasp 30,000 ; various species of coccus 



B 2 



