UTILITY OF BIRDS. 75 



all these and many others arc eagerly devoured by the robin. 

 Cut-worms emerge from the soil during twilight to seek their 

 food ; and the robin, one of the earliest foragers in the morning, 

 and one of the latest in the evening, takes great quantities of 

 cut-worms at such hours. 



The number of this race of caterpillars is so great that 

 " whole corn-fields," according to Dr. Harris, " are sometimes 

 laid waste by them. Cabbage-plants, till they are grown to a 

 considerable size, are very apt to be cut off and destroyed by 

 them. Potato vines, beans, beets, and various other culinary 

 plants, suffer in the same way. The products of our flower- 

 gardens are not spared ; asters, balsams, pinks, and many other 

 kinds of flowers, are often shorn of their leaves and central 

 buds, by these concealed vermin." 



The robin is an indefatigable destroyer of these caterpillars, 

 feeding his young with them almost incessantly. And when 

 we consider that this bird always raises two broods, and often 

 three broods of young in a season, we may judge that his 

 demands for insect food, especially in its larva state, must 

 exceed that of any other species. Last summer, (1861,) having 

 been confined nearly all the season to the house by illness, I had 

 ample opportunity to watch the habits of the few birds that 

 could be seen from my windows. These were chiefly robins, 

 bobolinks, grackles and other blackbirds, as well as multitudes 

 of sparrows. Though a continual warfare was waged against 

 the grackles, by the owners of the fields, I saw enough to 

 convince me that they were warring against their own friends 

 and servants. The robins were very numerous and familiar 

 in my neighborhood (the west end of Somerville and North 

 Cambridge.) One pair had a nest very near my house, and 

 were rearing a second brood in the month of July, when the 

 soil was so greatly parched by drought, that if robins lived 

 only upon berries and earth-worms, they must have starved to 

 death. I had often seen these birds at a distance pecking 

 vigorously upon the sward, and then drawing out a worm. I 

 knew that there were, at this time, no earth-worms near enough 

 tlie surface to be within the reach even of the long-billed 

 snipes. But when the bird was near enough, I could 

 distinctly see, by the form and appendages of the creature, that 

 it was invariably a cut-worm of a large species and of an olive 



