30 OUR NATIVE SONGSTERS. 



Snails and slugs, worms and insects, are the 

 food of the blackbird, accompanied by a vegetable 

 diet of grapes, cherries, currants, gooseberries, and 

 the bemes of the ivy, the holly, and the mountain 

 ash. It must be admitted that these birds some- 

 times commit great ravages in the fmits of tlie 

 orchards and gardens, but they more than com- 

 pensate for this by their services in destroying 

 snails and insects. Every one accustomed to 

 observe grass lands knows how terribly these are 

 sometimes injured by the larva of the common cock- 

 chafer, that insect which, in its perfected condition, 

 often flics against us with its loud hunnning in our 

 evening walks of ^lay and June, and which is 

 familiarly called the Oak-web. The grub <>f tliis 

 insect remains for four years in a larva state, and 

 will sometimes destroy the turf of whole acres 

 of meadow land, feasting also upon the roots of 

 corn, and when in gi'cat numbers, proving a sad 

 pest to the agriculturist. Rooks are known to be 

 great destroyers of this insect, following the 

 ploughman in his course, and picking up the prey 

 which the instrument may dislodge from the soil. 

 Nor is the blackbird useless in ridding the land 

 of cockchafers. The Eev. W. T. Bree com- 

 municated a fact of this sort to the ^ilagazine of 



