Ko. 4.] REPORT OF S^ATK ORNITHOLOGIST. 343 



the cedar Lirds came the trees were comparatively free from 

 tlu> beetle. 



Mr. Oiitram Bangs gives an instance corroborative of Mrs. 

 Treat's experience. He set out about twenty elms on his 

 place at Wareham, Mass. About the year 1904, when the 

 elms were fifteen to twenty feet iu height, they were badly 

 infested by the elm-leaf beetle ; but cedar birds came regularly 

 1() llit^ trees in constantly increasing numbers, searching every 

 liinb and twig. They even hung from the ends of the boughs, 

 like titmice, looking the leaves over carefully and spying out 

 the insects, until they cleared them all off, and the trees were 

 not afterwards infested. During the summer of 1908 I 

 attempted to learn by observation what l)irds were feeding 

 on the elm-leaf beetles in Massachusetts ; but in most eases 

 the birds were so high up in the trees that it was not possible 

 to determine accurately just what they were eating. It is 

 evident, however, that the yellow-throated vireo is destructive 

 to the elm-leaf beetle, and probably the warbling vireo is 

 one of its most active enemies. A gentleman in Marshfield 

 noticed four dead cedar birds under some elm trees soon after 

 the trees had been sprayed to kill the elm-leaf beetles, and 

 later when the grass was mowed he found several more. This 

 raised the question in his mind whether the birds had not 

 died from the effect of eating poisoned beetles. This question 

 is worthy of some study. 



T]ie Possible Destruction of Birds by spraying xvitli Arsenr 

 ical Insecticides. 

 During the last decade of the nineteenth century many 

 letters came to the Ornithologist of the State Board of Ag- 

 riculture, expressing the opinion that the practice of spray- 

 ing trees was fatal to birds. Correspondents stated that dead 

 birds were found in sprayed orchards, and that birds dimin- 

 ished in numbers where spraying was carried on. A bulletin 

 was published by the Maine State Board of Agriculture in 

 1898, in which four correspondents expressed the opinion 

 that spraying was injurious to birds ; but they gave no proof. 

 During the spraying operations for the extermination of the 

 gypsy moth in 1801 several flocks of fowls apparently were 



