I»Jo..l7. 



Tvjnnj from destroijlng Birds. 



331 



ture. That these species, then, were crea- 

 ted at first, or are now permitted to exist and 

 increase, merely to supply food to our race, is 

 an idea, which any one- but he who is endowed 

 with a Lilliputian mind or appetite will dis- 

 card. For what then were they termed ! for 

 certainly they are the work. of design — the 

 produce of a hand whose omnicience covers 

 at an onward glance, the whole existence of 

 the object he "is framing. What is their dyty 

 in the great business of the universe ! With 

 the solution of tliis question we open up our 

 ■ subject to the reader, and give it forth to the 

 agriculturist from its obscurity, as a subject 

 worthy, at least of thought. 



The nature and habits of birds, are as wide- 

 ly difl'erent, as those of the more tainiliar, be- 

 cause more accessible beasts, and therefore 

 we .would not be understood as saying, that 

 all, even of these more diminutive species, are 

 useful to the farmer. It is not so. Some are 

 of Eo use, others decidedly injurious, and with 

 the latter we would hold no terms; we would 

 say, destroy them in any manner which in 

 itself would not do more injury than it wouW 

 prevent if successful — but a large number of 

 these creatures are most useful and faithful 

 servants of the tiller of the ground. And 

 tliat is not all ; their labor is manifold. A 

 great multitude unite with some of the beasts 

 ar.d larger birds, in doing the vast and indis- 

 ipensible duty of removing the impurities ot 

 ^decaying vegetable and animal matter, which 

 ; but tor them would be a much more prolitic 

 • source of miasma and disease. They are the 

 great unpaid and unthanked scavengers of 

 the earth. While myriads, as we have said 

 before, are the assistants and ready instru- 

 ments of the farmer, and through him of man- 

 kind. Let him who would derive information 

 to strengthen our remark and his own con- 

 victions^ consult the natural history of this 

 curious and beautiful race — and his doubts 

 will vanish and give place to a light which 

 should long since haveshoneupon him and gui- 

 ded him inl-eference to this matter. He will find 

 that almost all cur most common and nume- 

 rous birds nourish themselves and their young 

 by tlie insects which are so destructive to 

 greenness and fruitfulness — a very few spe- 

 cies, to which we have referred bt fore — de- 

 stroy the useful produce of the earth, and 

 even they do not half the injury which is 

 caused by the trespasses of their paid slaught- 

 erers. But their ravages are far overbalan- 

 ced by the multitudes, and they, the most per- 

 secuted because the most inoffensive and ex- 

 posed, whose sole occupation is th'^ rearing of 

 their broods and the instinctive search for 

 and destruction of these insect enemies of 

 vegetation — the worm which consumes and 

 corrodes the thriving and spreading root — the 

 fly .which wastes the green ajid shady leaf— 



and the myriads of other tiny but baneful^ 

 creatures — the almost microscopic vermin of 

 our fields and gardens, which canker, decay, 

 and disease, if tiicy do not devour, the tender 

 and budding plant— cmd which are only less 

 in number and less formidable than the locusts 

 of Egypt because of the services of the race 

 which some look upon as only made to be de- 

 stroyed. 



'But let us further inquire if wewould have 

 still larger and more impressive ideas of the 

 importance of our subject, what are the most 

 numerous and general causes of the great and 

 distressincT fluctuations m the quantity and 

 quality of^the produce of our fertile and al- 

 most illimitable country, and the necessarily 

 consequent variations in those branches of our 

 commerce of which agriculture is the more 

 direct and immediate parent and even in 

 those which are more remotely connected 

 with it. What destroys, year alter year, the 

 growing fruits of many a tiiithfully wrought 

 garden,''the luxuriant and hard earned grain, 

 of many a waving field, nipped in their bloom 

 and consumed in their beauty and promise 

 by some untimely and alas increasing cause. 

 The great staples of many of our states are 

 wasted and ruined too often to allov/ of su- 

 pineness upon the subject. We^v/ould point 

 a fino-cr which wauld warn v/hile it instructs, 

 to the teeming answers to the questions we 

 have proposed, which stand forth in the num- 

 berless paragraphs which the journals of ma- 

 ny a season of want and hunger unfold, and 

 which tell sadly of a cause and effect, in re- 

 o-ard to whose prevention we are powerless, 

 without the aid of the persecuted tribes whose 

 services we Jiave been eulogizing. And what 

 is still more alarming, as the hum of business 

 and settlement increase, as the mouths which 

 are ready to devour the produce of the soil be- 

 come more numerous and clamorous — the 

 cause of this want is increasing, and its onl^' 

 remedy becoming every day less proportion- 

 ate in power to the duty which it performs. It 

 is a gloomy thought, but gloom is not enough; 

 the evil is serious, but like other evils whose 

 proo-ress is slow, and whose- causes are min- 

 utelind ramified, they are not duly apprecia- 

 ted ; the subject needs combined reflection 

 and steady action. Let our remarks especial 

 impress on the young the thought, that every 

 missile aimed in sport tends to take food from 

 the mouths of the poor and famishing — that 

 if successful in its aim it destroys its pretty 

 victim, however small in proportion may be 

 its immediate and perceivable etiect,— it de- 

 prives the agriculturists of the life-time la- 

 bor of one faithful servant at least, perhaps of 

 more who perish in a deserted nest. Let them 

 make him remember that every swallow which 

 pierces the air, so long the sprightly mocker 

 of his ambitious sportsmanship, so long aimed 



