Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 541 



bird is often very valuable. Many times our grape leaves are 

 destroyed by caterpillars ; one species this last season was very 

 destructive, tliey appearing in great numbei-s very suddenly, and 

 from their manner of feeding are called processionary caterpillars ; 

 in a few days the leaves on those grape vines will be mere skeletons. 

 If cat birds have nests in that neighborhood, those processions are 

 soon broken up. Near where I bought these birds was another stand 

 kept by a woman, where birds still less were hanging up for sale. I 

 asked her what they were ? She said, reed birds (reed birds left us 

 for the south a month ago). She had ten or twelve bunches, with a 

 dozen on each. They were blue birds, yellow birds or finches, creepers, 

 nut hatches, several downy woodpeckei-s, but the greater number 

 were wood robins and the hermit thrush, and at four shillings a 

 dozen. I offered to buy a dozen if she would let me pick out the 

 different kinds. This seemed to excite suspicion, and she at once said : 

 " There were no English sparrows among them." I soon found that 

 it would be impossible for me to get what I wanted, and left, intend- 

 ing to send some one the next morning to get either an assortment or 

 take the whole. But the next morning they were gone. The blue 

 bird I had several times examined, finding it exclusively insectivorous, 

 as its beak indicates. The creepers and nut hatches can eat nothing 

 else but insects. The wood robins and hermit thrushes I have never 

 killed, nor never will. While the beaks indicate them to be some- 

 what omnivorous, like the other thrushes, as they live almost exclu- 

 sively in the dense woods, they can do us no harm, even if they do 

 not live exclusively on insects. Any ©ne familiar with the song of 

 the wood robin, needs no description. That most valuable author on 

 ornithology, Alexander "Wilson, left directions in his will that he 

 should, be buried under the trees in the burial ground of the Swedes' 

 church, near Philadelphia, so that the birds could sing over his grave. 

 Of all the singing birds, the wood robin was the special favorite of 

 Wilson ; but the song of the hermit thrush was considered by Audu- 

 bon as still more exquisite. By common consent the melody of these 

 two little birds is unrivaled in this world, and yet a woman in Wash- 

 ington market calls them reed birds, and sells them for four shillings 

 a dozen. I have for years been investigating the food of birds. I 

 wished to know positively how far they were useful to us in controll- 

 ing the insects destructive to our crops. I have killed and dissected 

 many, so that the information should be absolute. I shall kill no 

 more for such a purpose. I have learned enough to satisfy any one 



