Birds and the Fruit-Farm 277 



amount of animal food equal to its weight. Sup- 

 pose that there is one nest of birds to every acre of 

 land in Pennsylvania, 28,800 acres; this means 

 3600 tons of insects consumed every day; of course 

 "insects" include insect life in its three forms — 

 worm, pupa, and winged, — not to speak of insects 

 in the egg. On the average, is there one bird's nest 

 to every acre of land in that commonwealth? 

 Undoubtedly there are more. Robins live fifteen 

 years. Few birds live out their time, being cut off 

 by storms, famine, or enemies, of whom the chief 

 is man. Few die of disease. Three thousand six 

 hundred tons of insects consumed daily make how 

 many for one summer? Figure this out and you 

 will discover that for four months alone it makes 

 insects enough to load a freight train nine miles 

 long, each car holding sixty tons! And this for 

 Pennsylvania only. What if we include all the 

 forty-eight States? It means that during one 

 season of only four months the birds of America 

 — assign but one pair of birds to every acre — con- 

 sume more than 3,600,000 tons of insects, or 

 enough to load a freight train nine himdred miles 

 long, each car carrying sixty tons; that is, a train 

 reaching from Buffalo to Chicago, full of the most 

 loathsome, the most injurious, the most pestilential 

 creatures known to man. Of course kill the birds ! 

 Of course it is better to have 3,600,000 tons of bugs 

 and worms devour our crops than to have these 

 same insects ground up in the crops of birds ! 

 A bird has a higher blood-temperature than any 



