810 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



should have been thought expedient to allow them to he shot 

 in any season. The quail, another of ihe privileged class, 

 has no title to be named in ccmpany with the others ; in the 

 planting time, he makes more havoc than a regiment of 

 crows, without atoning for his misdeeds by demolishing a 

 single grub. Nor is the partridge a much more scrupulous 

 respecter of the rights of property; though, as he lives in 

 comparative retirement, he succeeds in preserving a better 

 name for honesty. 



' There are some of our most familiar birds, of which a 

 word may here be said. Every body has seen the little 

 goldfinch on the thistle by the way-side, and wondered, per- 

 haps, that his taste should lead him to so thorny a luxury ; 

 but he is all this while engaged in devouring the seeds, 

 which but for him would overrun the grounds of every far- 

 mer. Even the bob-o'-link, a most conceited coxcomb, who 

 steals with all imaginable grace, destroys millions of the 

 insects which annoy the farmer most. All the little birds, 

 in fact, which are seen about the blossoms of the trees, are 

 doing us the same service in their own way. 



' Perhaps there is no bird which is considered more decid- 

 edly wanting in principle than the woodpecker ; and, cer- 

 tainly, so far as man is concerned, there is none more con- 

 scientious. So long as a dead tree can be found for her nest, 

 he will not trouble himself to bore into a living one ; what- 

 ever wounds he makes upon the living are considered by 

 foreign gardeners as an advantage to the tree. The sound 

 tree is not the object ; he is in pursuit of insects and their 

 larvse. In South Carolina and Georgia, forests to a vast ex- 

 tent have been destroyed by an insect, which would seem as 

 capable of lifting a tree as of destroying it. The people 

 were alarmed by the visitation, and sagaciously laid the 

 mischief at the door of the woodpecker, until they found 

 that they had confounded the bailiff with the thief 



' The injury arising from the loss of a single crop is hardly 

 to be estimated. The experience which is taught us by our 

 own misfortune is very dearly bought ; and we think that if 

 we can derive it from others, — if, for example, we can learn 

 from the ornithologists the means of preventing such injury, 

 as in many instances we may, — the dictates of economy com- 

 bine with those of taste, and warn us not to neglect the 

 result of his researches.' 



It was remarked by colonel Powel, that 'instead of being 

 regaled by the whistling robin and chirping bluebird, busily 



