No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 347 



better to tost all the tissues. Possibly the rapid digestion of 

 birds and their habit of rejecting disagreeable food from the 

 stomach might eliminate the poison from the organs of di- 

 gestion in some cases before the death of the bird. 



Some circumstantial evidence of the destruction of birds in 

 small nund)ers was volunteered by people who had read the 

 articles in the daily press. Mrs. E. M. Beals of Marblehead 

 noted the disappearance of some vireos two days after the 

 si)raying, and reiwrted that a good many dead birds had 

 been found by the caretaker on an estate at Nahant. Mr, 

 James H. Stark of Boston found two dead orioles following 

 the spraying, and noted that a pair of nesting robins had 

 disappeared. A worker on the gypsy moth force writes that 

 he has found dead birds where spraying has been carried on, 

 but has not found them elsewhere. He watched two spar- 

 rows' nests when the parents were taking canker worms from 

 sprayed trees; in one case one of the parent birds died, and 

 in the other the young perished. He noted that catbirds, 

 cuckoos, redstarts, and orioles came to the trees after insects, 

 and on looking about found two dead redstarts and one dead 

 oriole. Miss Annie Chase of Beverly missed a pair of nest- 

 ing indigo birds immediately after the spraying. It is no- 

 ticeable that the dead birds found are of the species that feed 

 on the gypsy moth, brown-tail moth or the elm-leaf beetle; 

 and, while the evidence is circumstantial and not conclusive, 

 it seems probable that some of these birds were poisoned. 

 Where one bird was found, ten might have been overlooked 

 or picked up by cats, dogs or other animals. While it is 

 quite possible that considerable numbers of birds may be 

 poisoned in this manner, the whole matter needs further 

 careful investigation before any safe conclusion can be 

 reacdied regarding the degree of mortality among birds from 

 this cause. 



Spraying cannot be given up because of any real or sup- 

 posed danger to birds, but it should be undertaken only when 

 the conditions are such that other means of restricting the 

 moth injury cannot be utilized. Spraying for brown-tail 

 caterpillars would be more effective if jiracticed in the fall 

 when the small caterpillars first appear, and there would then 



