526 [Assembly 



bird or bee martin, clape orhighholcj cat bird, wren, blue bird, meadow 

 lark, brown thresher, dove, fire bird or summer red bird, hanging bird, 

 ground robin or chewink, bobUnk or rice bird, robin, snow or chipping 

 bird, sparrow, Carolina lit, warbler, black bird, blue jay, and small 

 owl. Or destroying the eggs of any of the birds aforesaid. 



Such an act as this would grace any state, and if carried out by 

 honest and firm government vould enoble any empire. 



Birds constitute almost entirely our police against insects injurious 

 to vegetation, and when permitted to multiply, they will be in force 

 about equal to the mischievous power of the countless hosts of insects, 

 for one wren will destroy in a day more than ten men can do. Jer- 

 sey protects the birds, and the birds of Jersey in a few years will ex- 

 cite the astonishment of mankind by their numbers, song, utility and 

 beauty ; now and then some birds will take a taste of our fruit, but 

 for one cherry pecked by a robin we are freed from ten thousand 

 noxious insects. The Legislature of Jersey might have included 

 even bats along with the night hawk, for they sally out after sunset 

 and sweep the air of insects which fly by night. 



This is no light subject, for man has suffered famine and pestilence 

 in all probability, little less from insect legions than from war. The 

 Hessian fly is more to be feared than a hundred thousand armed men from 

 Hesse Cassel, and perhaps after all our vain research after the cause 

 of the potato disease, we may ultimately discover it to be owing to 

 some very minute inseet which the bat swallows by thousands at 

 night or birds by day. The huge whale is known to subsist on the 

 minute animals whose ceniillions abound in ocean, and his daily oc- 

 cupation is to take them into his capacious jaws and strain them 

 through his whalebone sieve. 



Famine has followed the trail of insects often in the history of 

 men, and pestilence has been found to follow in the rear. Let our 

 beautiful birds then abound! Let us teach them not to fear us. 



Dr. Underbill, moved that the thanks of this club be tendered to 

 the Legislature of the State of New-Jersey, for the passage of the law, 



