7732 Birds. 



the Roer, that an order was issued to cut down and burn the forest — 

 trees, branches, roots and brushwood.* 



" In East Prussia, contrary to all forest rules, three years ago 

 twenty-four millions of cubic feet of forest were ordered to be felled, 

 because the trees were perishing from the attacks of insects.f 



" Our admirals will give you much better information than we can 

 respecting the Termites which, principally at La Rochelle and Roche- 

 fort, destroy the timber in our naval dockyards, and even the registers 

 of the archives. 



" However considerable these ravages are, it is surprising that they 

 are not even greater when the prodigious fecundity of these injurious 

 species is considered ; and if God in his wisdom had not provided a 

 remedy, vegetation would have disappeared from the face of the earth. 



" 2. In fact, against such enemies man is powerless. His genius 

 may enable him to follow the course of the planets, to penetrate 

 mountains, or steer a ship against a storm ; he can kill or bend to his 

 will the monsters of the forests ; but in presence of these myriads of 

 insects, which from every point of the horizon settle upon his fields, 

 cultivated with so much care, his strength is sheer weakness. His 

 eye is not even sharp enough to discern many of them, his hand too 

 slow to catch them. % And even were he to annihilate them by mil- 

 lions they would reappear by milliards. From above, from below, 

 from right to left, they come in legions innumerable, without relapse. 

 In this invincible army, which advances to the conquest of the labour 

 of man, each member has its month, its day, its season, its tree, its 

 plant; each knows its own battle-ground, and never mistakes its post. 



" At the beginning of the world man would have succumbed in this 

 unequal struggle if God had not given him in the bird a powerful 

 auxiliary, a faithful ally, who wonderfully accomplishes the task which 

 man is incapable of performing.^ 



" This providential mission of birds for a long time was considered 

 a poetical exaggeration ; now, thanks to the labours of modern natu- 

 ralists, and especially of M. Florent Prevost, assistant naturalist at 



"* Baudrillart, • Dictionnaire des Forets V. Insectes.' Gadirler, 'Police des 

 Cbasses,' page 172 aud following. 



" t Dr. Gloger, Berlin, loco citato, page 322. M. Tscbudi's ' Des Insecles et des 

 Oiseaux,' pages 14 and 15, quotes analogous facts no less remarkable. 



" J The Cecidomyia is a fly of two inillimeties in length ; the weevil five 

 millimetres ; the Pyralis twenty millimetres. As regards the eggs, they are almost 

 imperceptible. 



" § Bufl"ou, quoted by Gadibled, page 178. Michelet, ' L'Oiseau,' passim. 



