204 NATURALISTS CABINET. 



Utility in destroying insects. 



This bird is found in Europe and Asia, and is 

 also very common in some parls of North Ame- 

 rica, particularly in the neighbourhood of Phila- 

 delphia. From observing its utility in destroy- 

 ing insects, it has long been a custom in many 

 parts of the United States to fix a small box at 

 the end of a long pole in gardens, and about 

 houses, as a place for it to build in. In these 

 boxes the animals form their nests, and hatch 

 their young, which the parent birds feed with a 

 variety of insects, particularly those which are 

 most injurious to gardens. 



A gentleman, who was at the trouble of watch- 

 ing these birds for the purpose, observed that 

 the parents generally went from the nest, and re- 

 turned with insects from forty to sixty times in 

 an hour ; and that in one particular hour, they 

 carried food seventy-one times in the hour. In 

 this business they were engaged during the 

 greater part of the day. Allowing twelve hours 

 to be thus occupied, a single pair of these birds 

 would destroy at least six hundred insects in the 

 course of one day, on the supposition that the 

 two birds took only a single individual each 

 time; but it is highly probable that they often 

 took more. 



