Birds and the Fruit-Farm 307 



the farmer's boys, and the fniit-grower's boys, and 

 all the other boys, and the hired help, and the 

 pothunters, and the "turkey storm," and the 

 wind that upsets nests, and sundry mysterious 

 enemies that swoop down upon the birds while 

 the farmer is at church. 



Watch the old birds. Every minute, from sun- 

 rise to sunset, and long in the twilight, they bring 

 food to their young, — sixty wortns, bugs, beetles, 

 moths, slugs an hour. Make your own calcula- 

 tion. How many robins at work and eating worms? 

 How many pounds of bugs and worms consumed 

 during the season? Credit the robin with thirty 

 pounds. Would farmer or fruit-grower rather 

 have the thirty pounds in his crop or in the robin's? 

 And the bird is not a robin after all; it is only a 

 thrush. Those Pilgrim Fathers who persisted in 

 coming by the Mayflower and in founding New 

 England, and in doing various, very various and 

 sundry things by themselves and their posterity, 

 said, "Robin," when in that first spring time at 

 Plymouth, after the most cruel of winters, they 

 saw and heard the red-breasted thrush and for the 

 first time felt at home in the New World. What 

 fruit-farmer in America will not prefer cats and 

 pothunters to robins even when they nest in the 

 old apple tree? 



A five per cent, loan on good security, with 

 punctual payment of interest, is not easy to find. 

 The universal law of money-lending, indeed, of all 

 investment is, the better the security, the lower 



