36 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



BIRDS USEFUL TO AGRICULTURE.^ 



BY E. II. FORBUSH, ORNITHOLOGIST TO THE BOARD. 



Studies of the economies of nature show that in a wild 

 country, untroubled hy civilized or semi-civilized man, the 

 interactions of nature's multitudinous organisms tend to pre- 

 serve a finely adjusted balance of her forces, which furthers 

 the survival and perpetuation of the best adapted forms of 

 animal and veaetable life. In such a region, as elsewhere, 

 certain of the higher animals feed on the lower, while some 

 of the lower subsist on the higher. In the end, however, 

 both vegetables and animals, while continually at war, flour- 

 ish, wax strong and perpetuate their kind. There birds, 

 mammals and insects, although filling important places in 

 the economy of nature, cannot be classed as beneficial or 

 injurious, for there is no agriculture. Introduce primitive 

 man into a country like this, and he would flourish without 

 interfering to an}^ appreciable extent with the balance of 

 forces. Wild grains, fruits and vegetables grow in pro- 

 fusion, wild animals and birds are unsuspicious and readily 

 taken. The simple wants of the primitive individual man 

 are readily supplied, and his desires go no farther. The 

 story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden typifies this 

 condition of man. 



If in the early days, through some apparent miscarriage of 

 nature's laws, the fine adjustment of some of nature's forces 

 was, for a time, disturl)ed, man, like the lower animals, 

 adapted himself to the changed conditions. If locusts over- 

 ran the country, devouring man's vegetable food, he followed 

 the example of the lower animals, and fed for the time on 

 locusts. No doubt the food oi John the Baptist in the 



* Illustrated by stereopticon. 



