74 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



fruits except earth-worms, which are believed to be profitable 

 to the soil. He is often seen, after a shower, drawing a worm 

 from its hole ; but this is more frequently a cut-worm than 

 any thing else, as I have ascertained by repeated observation. 

 He also devours, indiscriminately, nearly all sorts of insects 

 that crawl upon the surface of the soil, except those of a very 

 minute species. He prefers the corneous insects for his own 

 food, and uses worms and larva chiefly for his young that 

 require soft food. Earth-worms are not relished by old birds, 

 save the marsh-birds, when they can obtain orthopterous and 

 other hard-shelled insects ; poultry, though greedy consumers 

 of earth-worms early in the season, will always reject them for 

 grasshoppers, when they can take their choice. 



A very small proportion of the insectivorous birds take their 

 food from the ground, but confine their labors to the leaves 

 and branches of trees, as explained in my preceding remarks 

 on foraging. To the robin and other thrushes, the black- 

 birds, the grackles and the Gallinaceous birds has nature 

 chiefly entrusted the work of ridding the surface of the ground 

 of noxious insects, liut of all species, the robin is in this 

 respect the most useful, in our own land. He is peculiarly the 

 guardian of the grass-field and of all our annual crops. Hence 

 we find the number of robins in the suburbs of our cities 

 greater than in the rural districts, because they find the most 

 food where the soil is in the highest state of cultivation, giving 

 birth to proportional quantities of insects. There are no other 

 birds that could supply their place with equal advantage to 

 these crops. The other thrushes are too shy to frequent our 

 gardens, and blackbirds and plovers cannot be sufiiciently 

 domesticated. 



It is not probable that we could raise more than half the 

 usual produce of our fields and gardens, if the robin were 

 exterminated. He destroys nearly all kinds of worms, grubs 

 and caterpillars that live upon the green-sward and cultivated 

 land, and large quantities of crickets and grasshoppers, before 

 they are fully grown. The grubs of locusts, of harvest-flies 

 and of beetles, and the pupae of the same, when turned up by 

 the plough ; apple-worms, when they leave the fruit and crawl 

 about in quest of a new shelter; those subterranean caterpillars 

 or cut-worms, that come out of the earth to seek their food ; 



