3o6 An American Fruit-Farm 



strawberries; just a 'pick* out of each one and 

 then go to another; just sampling the whole patch. 

 Jimmy, get your gun!" 



Now a farmer or a fruit-grower never makes a 

 mistake; never eats the wrong thing at the wrong 

 time; never tries to grow three blades of grass on 

 soil that will not grow one; never neglects his trees, 

 or his berry-patch, no never. It is always the 

 birds, or the wind, or the weather. Farmer or 

 fruit-grower never plants potatoes and reaps 

 Colorado beetles; or sets a berry-patch and raises 

 grubs. But the robin eats one strawberry and nine 

 wild fruits and as a digester fills up on angle- 

 worms, cankerworms, grasshoppers, caterpillars, 

 snails, slugs, spiders, and beetles. Of course, kill the 

 robins! Kill them because they eat one per cent, 

 of their food from cherry tree and berry bush. 

 And then, it is such sport ! Think of the joy, the 

 excitement of stalking the robin! What are lions, 

 tigers, elephants to robins? And the foolish 

 creatiu*e persists in nesting year after year right 

 under the farmer's nose: in the porch vine, over 

 the kitchen door, by the well-curb, in the old 

 apple tree where robins nested in grandmother's 

 time and with special consideration for the cats. 

 What better friend has the cat than the plump, 

 stupid mother robin, and the plumper, stupider 

 little robins! ''I don't shoot robins," remarked 

 one virtuous farmer; ''I raise 'em for the cats." 

 Three broods a year if the robins manage to escape 

 the cats, and the farmer, and the fruit-grower, and 



