JANUARY. 1 1 



best evidence of an increasing taste in the right direction. 

 In Massachusetts there are several of these associations, and 

 though their labors have not been always attended with the 

 best results, owing to the injudicious selection of trees, they 

 have awakened attention to the subject, and laid the founda- 

 tion of future success. A little more experience and some 

 more knowledge are requisite to carry out these views in the 

 most thorough manner. When once they get into the way 

 of selecting moderate-sized nursery trees, preparing the 

 ground well, and planting them carefully, they will find 

 such good results, that they will abandon the present system 

 of selecting trees mostly from the woods and pastures. More 

 than one half of the trees planted around Boston, and we 

 doubt not in other parts of the country, die from the causes 

 we have mentioned. Indeed it is lamentable to see so much 

 valuable time spent in setting out a poor tree, lopped off to a 

 bare pole, with the expectation it will ever grow and make a 

 beautiful object. 



PLEA FOR THE BIRDS THEIR UTILITY TO AGRICULTURE. 



BY WILSON FLAGa. 



Some years since, while a traveller was passing through 

 Western Carolina and Virginia, he observed a forest, in which 

 the trees, over a space of hmidreds of acres, were either dead 

 or dying. On inquiring of a countryman if he knew the 

 cause of this devastation, he replied that the whole mischief 

 was done by woodpeckers ; that these birds had greatly mul- 

 tiplied for a few years past, and though the inhabitants had 

 been very busy in exterminating them with their guns, there 

 were still enough of them left to peck the trees, until the 

 woods were nearly destroyed. Here was a strong instance 

 of the errors that arise from superficial observation. These 

 deluded farmers were ignorantly engaged in protecting the 

 real enemies of the forest by warring against the woodpeck- 

 ers. The myriads of wood-worms of different species that 



