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of song, for the varied splendours of their plumage, and for 

 their skill in the construction of their nests, many of its 

 species are unsurpassed. 



In general the females are smaller and less brilliant in 

 their plumage than the males. Although, to a considerable 

 degree, the birds which compose this Order depend par- 

 tially for subsistence upon our grain and fruit, and injure 

 the buds of our orchards, yet these evils are more than 

 compensated by the number of insects and their larvae 

 which they destroy during the season of incubation. "There 

 is not a vegetable production which we cultivate," remarks 

 Sir Win. Jardine, "from the strongest forest-tree to the 

 most tender garden-flower, that is not liable to the attacks 

 of multitudes of insects, and though tiny in their form and 

 weapons, and insidious in their mode of attack, the conse- 

 quences are not less severe and fatal. The depredations 

 which they have been known to commit are many thousand 

 times greater and more extended than the worst attacks of 

 the feathered creation, and we cannot look upon this large 

 group of birds, all of them wholly or partially insectivorous, 

 otherwise than as the natural check interposed by Divine 

 Providence upon a race of creatures which, in their own 

 places, also lend efficient aid against other classes of depre- 

 dators." 



