No. 4.] BIRDS USEFUL TO AGRICULTURE. 37 



wilderness — " lociists and wild honey " — was very accept- 

 able to him. If mice or rats abounded and destroyed a part 

 of man's vegetable sustenance, he took it second-hand by 

 feeding on rats and mice, as all other rapacious animals do 

 if occasion requires. The individual was seeking only his 

 own subsistence and that of his family. There was no agri- 

 culture, no money and no trade. But in an evil day man 

 " ate of the tree of knowledge." To provide against possible 

 want, he undertook to protect and propagate useful plants, 

 with a view to increase his store of non-perishable food 

 products. He also undertook to domesticate animals. This 

 was the beginning of agriculture and civilization. Imme- 

 diately birds, mammals, insects and plants became his 

 enemies, and he has had to earn his bread by the sweat of 

 his brow ever since. 



With a new source of food supply and attention given 

 to the arts of peace the population of the earth began to 

 increase, man grew in intelligence, civilization succeeded to 

 savagery, and man, by reason of his arts, became the princi- 

 pal factor among other animals, — bending all others to his 

 will. By his artificial protection and propagation of species, 

 he committed serious infractions of nature's laws. In thus 

 disturbing the balance of nature, he brought upon himself 

 the consequences. But in the course of centuries there came 

 a gradual adjustment to the conditions of agriculture, so that 

 in the older civilized countries to-day man and nature are 

 more in harmony than in lands recently brought under the 

 plow. 



Now let us turn to the western hemisphere, where agri- 

 culture and civilization together have come hand in hand in 

 comparatively recent times, and see some of the results of 

 the settlement of the civilized agriculturist in the primeval 

 wilderness. 



When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, in 1620, 

 they found there a wild country, sparsely inhabited by 

 savages. Nature had been practically undisturbed b}' aborig- 

 inal man, and agriculture was in its most primitive condi- 

 tion. In the course of settlement the white man at once 

 began to "improve" the wilderness, outraging nature's laws 

 in many vvays, and setting up serious disturbances among the 



