JANUARY. 



21 



thought an extravagant calculation : but any one who has 

 raised young birds of the insectivorous tribes, would not be 

 surprised at this statement. I took from their nest two young 

 blue birds, which are only about half the size of a jay, and 

 experimented upon them, for the purpose of ascertaining the 

 truth of these assertions of naturalists. These little birds 

 would swallow twenty large muck-worms daily, when they 

 could get them, or angle worms and grasshoppers in the same 

 proportion. Their voracity convinced me that there is no ex- 

 aggeration in the usual calculations on these subjects. 



It is by making such observations that we learn the impor- 

 tance of attending to the economy of nature, and to be cau- 

 tious how we disturb that beneficent law of compensation, by 

 which all things are preserved in their just relations and pro- 

 portions. Insects, in various ways, some of which are well 

 known, may be as valuable as birds, but the latter are more 

 easily destroyed by human means, and are far less rapid in 

 their increase, than insects, whose over-multiplication often 

 becomes the pest of the earth. A dozen idle men and boys 

 in each of our villages, might soon nearly exterminate the 

 robins and blackbirds ; but the united efforts of one thousand 

 inhabitants in each, could not destroy the grubs and beetles, 

 which would have been devoured by these birds. Our farm- 

 ers in the vicinity of Boston, many years since, petitioned the 

 legislature to protect the birds by a statute, until after mid- 

 summer. Their real motive, at the time, was said to be less 

 that of protecting the birds, than that of preventing their 

 tilled fields and mowing lands from being trampled down and 

 injured by the gunners. Had they looked still deeper into 

 the subjects of their philosophy, they might have learned that 

 these s])ortsmen caused them more damage by destroying the 

 birds than by treading down their crops. We are yet initiated 

 only in the first rudiments of this interesting science, which, 

 in proportion as it becomes a general study, will teach us the 

 remedy for many of those evils, now so universally lamented 

 by the farmer and the orchardist. In the outer portals of its 

 temple, by the light of one of its tapers, have I learned a few 

 facts ascertained by the labors of other men. These have 



