18 



ESSAY. 



THE PESTS OF THE FARM. 



By Edwakd a. Samuels. 



A topic comprehending so wide a field as the one designated 

 above might fill volumes and still be far from exhausted ; for a 

 very large proportion of the mammals, some of the birds and 

 myriads of the insects are continually at work, through their 

 whole lives, against the labors of the tiller of the soil. To 

 describe of these even the species peculiar to our own State, 

 the manner in, and the extent to, which they are noxious, would 

 require a space entirely beyond the necessary limits of the pres- 

 ent sketch. But there are some species whose characteristics 

 and habits have distinguished them as being especially noxious, 

 and to a discussion of these I will confine myself. It is not to 

 be noticed in the lives of those animals, usually regarded as 

 pests, that some share of their operations are beneficial, so that 

 the amount of injury they inflict more than balances the good 

 they render. That some of the mammals and birds are bene- 

 ficial by destroying noxious insects is well known ; but that 

 their predatory habits and wholesale destruction of small bene- 

 ficial mammals and birds more than neutralize the benefits that 

 they do, is also well known. An animal, then, to be noxious, 

 must, in plain language, do more harm than good ; and to be 



beneficial, the reverse. 



]\Iammals. 



Among our mammals, the first group which attracts our 

 attention is that which comprehends the rats and mice, called 

 the Muridcc, and of these animals the common brown Norway 

 rat and field mice are, economically speaking, the most impor- 

 tant. The former of these is, undoubtedly, one of the greatest 

 of all pests. The brown rat does not appear to be indigenous 

 to this country, but was undoubtedly introduced from Europe 

 in the ships of the early settlers. Its history seems to be 

 imperfectly known, some naturalists believing that it came 



