42 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



he had ascertained that each hen requires one 

 bushel and a third of grain in a year, which he 

 thought would not be at a less average cost than 

 $1,33 a year; — then how shall he find his profits ? 

 Would she afford liim twelve dozen eggs in a year? 

 if so, she would pay cost, but nothing more ; in all j 

 his experiments, which had been many, ho had 

 not been able to derive a profit from them, beyond 

 the keeping of some eight to twelve, which num- 

 ber would provide mostly for themselves while the 

 ground is open. 



Mr. Simon Browx related some experiences in 

 which he had realized larger profits from the in- 

 vestments made in his poultry than from any other 

 item on his farm. 



Dr. J. Reynolds said he knew a lad who, five 

 years ago, began to keep poultry. He was the son 

 of a widow. He bought five or six hens, raised 

 chickens, and sold chickens and eggs. He fed 

 largely upon fresh fish. He now has a flock of some 

 fifty hens ! has purchased a cow, repaired his little 

 barn, clothed himself, assisted his mother more or 

 less, and is now, from the sale of his milk and the 

 produce of his poultry, quite a thriving young man, 

 accumulating a very pretty capital. Fresh fish is 

 found, near the sea shore, a cheap and excellent 

 food for poultry. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 BIRDS AND INSECTS. 



ARE BIRDS USEFUL IN DESTROYING INSECTS^ ESPE- 

 CIALLY CATERPILLARS? 



Nobody will deny, that truth defends itself, and 

 that it, if hidden for a time, will break forth the 

 more powerfully and shine brightly, illuminating 

 the night of ignorance and error. Siill it takes, 

 sometimes, not j/ears, but centuries, to dispel error, 

 and he who should confide in the hope of an im- 

 mediate acknowledgment of what is true, would 

 be very much disappointed. History teaches but 

 one single lesson, viz: that kobody cares about 



ITS LESSONS. 



Not long ago, somebody doubted the usefulness 

 of birds in destroying insects ; lie was briefly an- 

 swered ia tills paper. One should think, that even 

 a man who never examined the stomach of a bii-d 

 belonging to the Finch tribe f. i. — I need not al- 

 lude to the insectiverous birds; their name being 

 sufficient proof — could for a moment be uncertain, 

 with what kind of food they rear their young. 

 Nothing is needed but eyes to see; there are, how- 

 ever, hbnd who ivill not sue. 



Nature is always and everywhere alike herself. 

 Finches, f. i. are Finches in America, as well as in 

 Europe and Africa. They may differ ever so much 

 as spnies, but they do not differ in t'leir general 

 char.if'ter. They live on grain and insects in Amer- 

 ica ; tliey feed on insects and grain all over the 

 globe. 



There is a sparrow — Fringilla, now pj/rgita do- 

 meslica-r-iiii common ia Europe, especially in Cler- 

 many, and in more than one respect so trouble- 

 some, tliat he is persecuted by everybody ; and as 

 he wis thought to be very injurious to fields and 

 gardens, the different governments made the law, 



that each male individual of age had annually to 

 deliver a certain number of sparrow heads, vary- 

 ing, in different States, from 6 to 12. After this 

 course had been pursued for many years, people 

 began to complain about the scarcity of fruit. 

 There were sections of the country, where the 

 sparrows had been entirely exterminated. Such 

 parts suffered the most, and, instead of the former 

 abundance, their trees yielded no fruit. 



Although I was then very little interested in 

 Natural Historj', yet this fact arrested my atten- 

 tion, especially as I read in a French journal, a 

 remark of a French naturalist — I believe it was 

 Cuvicr — that the sparrows reared their young with 

 nothing but insects ; -and that they were leanest 

 in the season of harvest, and fattest in the spring. 

 This struck me as very curious; for whenever I 

 saw thousands of sparrows, united in one flock, 

 falling upon the corn-fields, I imagined that they 

 were devouring rye, wheat, barley, etc. I conclu- 

 ded to ascertain this by a direct experiment. In 

 the fillowing winter (ISiZ-l) I procured sixty living 

 sparrows. Having made two enclnsures in my 

 study, I put twenty-five sparrows in each, ten 1 

 caged. All had plenty of sand, brick-dust, hme, 

 etc. I fed twenty-five of them on different kinds 

 of grain ; such as wheat, rye, oats, buck-wheat 

 and the like. Not one of them lived Imger than 

 six loeehs ; they all died of consumption of the 

 stomach. Twenty-five of them I fed on grain,' 

 boiled meat and meal worms. The ten in the ca- 

 ges I fed wholly on either worms, or boiled eggs 

 or meat. All of them lived six months in captivi- 

 ty ; they were plump and fat, and were set at lib- 

 erty in the spring. In the following summer, I 

 took several young sparrows of various ages from 

 their nests, killed them and examined their stom- 

 achs. I never found anything in them but insects 

 and loorms ; and having, moreover, convinced my- 

 self concerning the condition of the sparrows in the 

 spring, suDUTiier and fall, and that, in the summer 

 and fall, their stomachs contained chiefly insects 

 and very few grass seeds, hardly ever grain., I be- 

 gan to write in periodicals and to address the gov- 

 ernments directly. As I had a great number of 

 witnesses, all of whom were as much surjirised at 

 the unlooked for results of my experiments as my- 

 self, I had the good fortune of restoring the poor 

 sparrows ta their lost reputation, at least, in that 

 province of the kingdom of Hanover in which I 

 lived. The above mentioned law \vi\s abolished, 

 and the sparrows remained unmolested. 



My experiments were conclusive. There is but 

 one way to refute them, i. e., to show by experi- 

 ments that mine were wrong. Bat such experi- 

 ments are connected with some trouble, and this 

 trouble is not paid for in casli or good notes of hand. 

 Notlong ago I showed on what sea-shores as];taragu8 

 does not grow, and where I found it wild. Since 

 that time I received a new edition of Lcnz's Natu- 

 ral History, 5 vols., a book which, if any, deserves 

 a translation into the Enwlisli. Its author asserts 

 that asparagus grows wild in Germany, adding that 

 it is found in sandy places. Supposing now, my 

 statements are wrong or incomplete, nothing is ne- 

 cessary but to show, on uihat seashores asparagus 

 grows. To resort to a chemical analysis in order 

 to settle that questiim, is too curious an advice to 

 ba followed. Yet somebody gave it. 



Cuarles SiedhoFs 



