66 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



that if they eat the birds, the Ijirds cannot protect them from 

 famine. The most serious evils were produced ; the farmers' 

 crops were destroyed by insects, and the gardens and orchards 

 produced no fruit. Investigations of the cause of these evils by 

 ingenious naturalists, proved them to be the direct consequence 

 of the extermination of birds. 



Some years ago in Virginia and Carolina several tracts of 

 forest were attacked by a malady which caused the trees to 

 perish over hundreds of acres. A traveller passing through 

 that region, inquired of a countryman, if he knew the cause of 

 this devastation. He replied that the whole mischief was done 

 by woodpeckers ; and though the inhabitants had killed great 

 numbers of them, there still remained enough to bore into the 

 trees and destroy them. The traveller, not satisfied with this 

 account, made some investigations, and being an entomologist, 

 he soon convinced them that the cause of the mischief was 

 the larva of a species of the Buprestis, which had multiplied 

 beyond all bounds. This larva was the favorite food of the 

 woodpeckers, which had congregated lately in that region, ou 

 account of the abundant supply. He proved to them that they 

 were ignorantly engaged in protecting the real destroyers of the 

 forest, by warring against the woodpeckers, which, if left 

 unmolested, would nearly eradicate this pest. Birds become 

 accustomed to certain locations ; and if, by any accident, a cer- 

 tain region happens to be deserted by them for a season, insects 

 of all kinds gain a start and destroy vegetation. 



" In the year 1798, the forests in Saxony and Brundenburg 

 were attacked with a general mortality. The greater part of 

 the trees, especially the firs and the different kinds of pine, 

 whose bitter and aromatic branches are rarely the prey of 

 insects, died, as if struck at the roots by some secret malady. 

 It was not here, as often happens, that the foliage above was 

 devoured by caterpillars, the trees perished without showing any 

 signs of external disease. This calamity became so general, 

 that the regency of Saxony sent naturalists and skilful foresters 

 to find out the cause. They soon found it in the multiplication 

 of one of the lepidopterous insects, which in its larva state, 

 insinuated itself within the tree, and fed upon the wood. 

 Whenever any bough of the fir or the pine w^as broken, this 

 detestable insect was found within it, which had often hollowed 



