Puzzling Questions 197 



fidence it reposes in man, it is a graceless office to raise a 

 word of doubt ; and yet, apart from the depredations it 

 commits in fruit-growing districts, there can be little doubt 

 that, if the increase in its numbers goes on unchecked, as it 

 has done for the past thirty or forty years, it must shortly 

 become a factor to be reckoned with by the agriculturist. 

 Primarily its food consists of worms and grubs ; but failing 

 these, it is almost omnivorous, and already it is known to 

 consume a very considerable quantity of grain at harvest 

 time. That this is so in certain corn-growing districts, I 

 can speak from personal knowledge ; and if the taste 

 develops, as it probably will do, the farmers of the next 

 generation may be crying out to be saved from yet another 

 of their friends. 



The larvae of the Tipulid<e are, at once, amongst the most 

 destructive of insects to a large number of cultivated plants, 

 and a favourite food of Starlings ; and the number of these 

 which a single pair of Starlings will carry to their young, in 

 the course of a day, is simply marvellous. But if that 

 number be multiplied by the hundreds, or thousands, as the 

 case may be, of Starlings known to inhabit a given area, 

 the question of supply and demand at once becomes pertinent. 

 How fruitful insects are (especially the injurious ones), we 

 can all form some idea ; but Starlings are not their only 

 natural enemies, nor the only ones that have shown marked 

 increase within recent years, while draining, liming, and 

 various other agricultural operations do not tend towards 

 their well-being. The questions arising are, therefore, 

 something like the following : If with all these things 

 operating against them, and the army of Starlings still multi- 

 plying, the insects are yet able to hold- their own, however 

 came it that our grandfathers were able to grow any crops 

 at all ? Or, secondly, will not Nature some day turn the 

 energies of her superfluous army into some other channel, 

 before the war has been waged to extermination against her 

 insect hosts, and what will the birds then take to feeding 

 upon ? Perhaps the practical answer to these questions 

 may be that sufficient to the day is the evil thereof ; but it 

 is the conviction of some observant people that the day of 



