204 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [P. D. 4. 



and geese, but information regarding some of the most useful 

 of such plants may be found in the following publications of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture: Bureau of Biological 

 Survey, Circular 81, and Department of Agriculture Bulletins 

 58 and 205. All may be obtained of the Superintendent of 

 Documents, United States Department of Agriculture, Wash- 

 ington, District of Columbia. 



Plants foe Protecting Cultivated Fruits. 

 The chief fruit-eating birds in Massachusetts are the robin, 

 the catbird and the cedar waxwing. The flicker, English spar- 

 row, Baltimore oriole and a few other species occasionally are 

 mischievous, and the starling, a recent introduction from the 

 Old World, seems likely to become most destructive of all. 

 Cherries are most often attacked by fruit-eating birds, but all 

 small fruits are eaten by them. It is not good biology to 

 shoot birds for taking fruit. It is better to provide fruit enough 

 for ourselves and the birds, and thus retain their services as 

 insect destroyers. It will pay the fruit grower to lure them 

 away from his cultivated cherries and berries, if possible, by 

 setting out plants that bear earlier and more attractive fruit. 

 My experiments with the native red mulberry were successful 

 in protecting cherries, and I have watched a garden where a 

 single tree of the Downing mulberry entirely protected several 

 trees of cultivated cherries of the harder varieties. No native 

 bird troubled the cherries although the English sparrows occa- 

 sionally pecked one. I have learned from fruit growers in New 

 Jersey that mulberry trees protected their cherry crops from 

 robins even in a very dry season, when robins elsewhere had 

 been destructive to the fruit. The Russian mulberry is very 

 early and will grow in southeastern Massachusetts. Elsewhere 

 in the State, as hereinbefore stated, the white mulberry, the 

 red or the Downing or New American would serve. The 

 advantages of the Downing or New American are that it is a 

 quick grower and fruiter, bears very early in the season and 

 appears to be perfectly hardy, at least in eastern Massachu- 

 setts. 



Mr. G. T. Powell tried the experiment of planting a row of 

 soft early cherries known as the Governor Wood. The birds 



