300 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



BIRDS AS PROTECTORS OF WOODLANDS.* 



BY E. H. FORBUSII, ORNITHOLOGIST TO THE BOARD. 



The greatest enemy of the forest is man, for there is no 

 devastation of the woodlands which even approximates that 

 which comes from fire or the axe. Against these evils (which 

 are blessings only when well handled) only education and 

 legislation can protect us. We know the injury to the wood- 

 lands caused by long droughts, or by cold and storms. From 

 injuries so caused there is no deliverance, neither is there 

 any remedy provided, but the damage from elemental causes 

 usually falls on trees which have passed their age of greatest 

 usefulness, or upon young and sickly specimens. We know 

 that trees are subject to many injuries by animals. Their 

 foliage is eaten by beetles, flies, grubs and caterpillars ; their 

 fruit and seeds destroyed by insects, birds and squirrels ; 

 their twigs destroyed by borers or cut off by girdlers ; their 

 bark eaten by mice, hares and other animals ; their trunks 

 and roots attacked by wood borers ; even their very life 

 blood, the sap, is sucked out by aphides. Against such 

 injuries, however, nature provides preventives or remedies. 

 Some species of trees have hundreds of insect species feed- 

 ing upon them. When we consider well the fecundity, 

 voracity and consequent great possibilities for mischief pos- 

 sessed by the trees' enemies, we wonder that trees survive 

 at all. Still, trees spring up and grow apace. In a wooded 

 country a few years' neglect suffices to clothe field or pas- 

 ture with a growth of bushes and 3'oung trees, and in time 

 a wood lot succeeds the cleared land. That trees are able 

 thus to spring up and grow to maturity without man's care 

 is sufficient evidence that they are protected by their natural 

 friends from the too injurious inroads of their natural ene- 

 mies. Among these friends l)irds hold the chief place. 



* Illustrated by the author. 



