THE PESTS OF THE FARM. 81 



make any exhibit of the mode or success of carrying on my 

 business, but to show that I have improved the farm; that it 

 is now in a good state of cultivation, and that it has the past 

 season produced large crops. I can say, however, that I have 

 the present year made farming pay as well as I could reasonably 

 expect. • 



THE PESTS OF THE FARM. 



NORFOLK. 

 Essay by Edward A. Samuels. 



An essay upon a subject comprehending so wide a field of in- 

 vestigation might fill volumes and still be far from exhausted ; 

 a very large proportion of the mammals, some of the birds and 

 myriads of the insects are continually at work, through their 

 whole lives, against the labors of the farmer. To describe even 

 the species of these animals peculiar to our own State, the extent 

 to which they are injurious, and the manner in which they do 

 their injury would require a space beyond the necessary limits 

 of the present sketch. But there are some species whose habits 

 and characteristics have distinguished them as especially nox- 

 ious, and I shall confine myself to a discussion of these. In the 

 lives of those animals, usually regarded as pests, some share of 

 their operations are beneficial, so that the amount of injury they 

 inflict more than balances the good they render. Some of the 

 mammals and birds are beneficial by destroying noxious insects ; 

 but their predatory habits and wholesale destruction of small 

 beneficial mammals and birds more than neutralize the good 

 they do. An animal, then, to be noxious, must, in plain 

 language, do more harm than good ; and to be beneficial, the 

 reverse. 



MAMMALS. 



Among our mammals, the first group which attracts our 



attention is that which comprehends the rats and mice, called 



the 3Iiiridcs, and of these animals the common brown Norway 



rats and field mice are, economically speaking, the most impor- 



11* 



