THE BIRDS' PETITION. 219 



some better treatment to his feathered benefactors than 

 snares and fowling-pieces can afford. In an amusing 

 article, entitled the l Birds' Petition,' the grievance of the 

 winged sufferers is duly set forth to the Senate of France ; 

 aye, and if they will but open their ears to listen, to 

 English farmers also : 



"We beg to inform you, Messieurs les Senateurs, that there exist 

 in France several thousand species of insects, all endowed with 

 frightful fecundity, and almost all living exclusively at the expense 

 of valuable vegetable productions. The sturdy oak, the ornamental 

 elm, the fir, the pine, the precious olive, and the still more precious 

 vine, languish when they do not die outright from the attacks 

 of hosts whose legions are marshalled under standards inscribed 

 LUCANUS, CERAMBYX, SCOTYLUS, SCARAB^EUS, PHIJEOTEIBUS, DACUS, 

 PYRALUS, PHALJENA, and other barbaric mottoes, which the most 

 voluble Starling amongst us cannot pronounce. 



Wheat and other corn plants are ravaged at the root by the grub 

 of the cockchafer ; in the bud, by the cecidomyx ; in the grain, by 

 the weevil. Cruciferous plants, such as colza and turnips, are 

 destroyed as soon as they are out of the ground, by one set of 

 parasites, while other insect foes await the formation of the pod to 

 take up their lodging in it, and feed on its contents. Peas, beans, 

 and lentils are like the candle which an unthrifty housekeeper burns 

 at both ends : at top their fruit is cleaned out by grubs, at bottom 

 the vital sap is intercepted by underground and burrowing insects. 

 Your petitioners do not go so far as to say that, in every field, the 

 insects eat everything ; but, after the insects have taken their tithe, 

 the farmer has still a further tithe to pay to mice, rats, and the 

 innumerable small extortioners who, after a joyous summer in the 

 field, take up their winter quarters in the barn. 



The loss occasioned to the wheat, in one single year, in one 

 department of the east of France, by one sole species of larvae, is 

 estimated at one hundred and sixty thousand pounds, at the very 

 least. To this insect are attributed the scanty harvests of the three 

 years which preceded 1856. In certain fields, the loss amounted to 

 nearly half the crop. Out of twenty pods of colza, taken at hazard, 

 and containing five hundred and four seeds, only two hundred and 

 ninety-six seeds were good : the rest were consumed or damaged by 

 insects. A crop of colza which produced only one hundred and 

 eighty pounds' worth of oil, ought to have given two hundred and 

 eighty-eight pounds' worth, and would have done so, if your peti- 

 tioners had been allowed fair play. In Germany, the nun moth 

 (Phal&na monacha) has caused whole forests to perish. Three 

 years ago, in Eastern Prussia, more than twenty-four millions of 

 cubic metres of fir- wood were obliged to be felled, solely because the 

 trees were dying from the attacks of insects. 



