September 7, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



311 



of the chick-a-dees. The piazza is a high one, 

 and extends on three sides of the house. Hun- 

 dreds of caterpillars formed their cocoons in the 

 chinks and crevices of the ceiling, and there the 

 little birds found them (p. 121). 



Among notes on other birds which he had 

 studied, but which were not found to destroy- 

 either of the insect pests he treats, is quite a 

 long dissertation upon the yellow-bellied wood- 

 pecker. After watching one drilling holes in 

 an apple tree for some time, he wrote the fol- 

 lowing : 



I shot this poor bird, expecting to find positive 

 evidence in the stomach of what it made these 

 holes for — and found two seeds or pits ' (of which 

 one and half the other are represented in Fig. 9, 

 Plate 10), with the purple skins of the same fruit, 

 seven small ants, and one insect of the chinch 

 bug kind about the size of those found in the beds 

 of some taverns. But of bark or sap there was not 

 even a trace. 



Later in the day I shot another of the same 

 species of bird in an old orchard out of town. 

 The stomach of this one contained the pulp of an 

 apple and one ant — nothing else. This one was 

 on the upper part of an apple tree, and was not 

 pecking or sounding. The investigation of this 

 bird so far is unsatisfactory. I have seen no 

 evidence yet that these holes are made in search 

 of food. Ants are certainly found sometimes 

 about these holes, and apparently in pursuit of 

 the sap that exudes from them; but the idea sug- 

 gested by some, that the birds make them to at- 

 tract these ants by such tempting baits, is a 

 palpable exaggeration of the reasoning power of 

 this bird (p. 118). 



Notwithstanding the subsequent great in- 

 crease of knowledge in regard to birds, the 

 puzzling problem of the sapsucker is in almost 

 as unsatisfactory a state at the present as 

 when Dr. Trimble was making his pioneer 

 investigation. 



In the case of some other birds, also, of 

 whose status we are none too sure, the au- 

 thor's treatise presents data. Among such 

 birds are warblers and creepers, mentioned in 

 the following paragraph: 



The season of 1864 will be memorable as the 

 year of aphides, or plant lice. The first crop of 

 leaves on many of the apple trees Avas so alive with 



' Judging from the illustration these are evi- 

 dently the seeds of the dogwood, Cornus florida. 



a species of these pests that most of them fell off, 

 causing also a profuse shedding of the young 

 apples. Warblers of many kinds, then just com- 

 ing on from the south, creepers, wrens and even 

 sparrows, as well as many other kinds of birds, 

 fed upon these the livelong day. The throats, and 

 even the back parts of the beaks of some of them, 

 would be found lined with these aphides, many 

 of them still alive, and their stomachs containing 

 a juice that would leave the hands colored as they 

 are after crushing these insects. The creases or 

 folds of the stomachs were lined with what ap- 

 peared to be an accumulation of the haira of cater- 

 pillars, but under the microscope were found to 

 be the legs of these plant lice — thousands and 

 thousands of them (p. 114). 



From stomach examination he learned, also, 

 that the bobolink eats cankerworms. " I have 

 found his stomach filled to repletion with 

 these troublesome caterpillars" (p. 114). The 

 same pests he finds are eaten by another bird. 



I have found as many as thirty-six young 

 canker worms in the stomach of one (cedar-bird), 

 and I have known companies of these birds come 

 after a species of canker worm on a cherry tree, 

 several times every day, for two weeks, during the 

 last summer; and when I saw them afterwards 

 feeding upon the cherries, I felt that they had 

 saved the crop, and were entitled to a part of it. 

 This and several other species of birds are very 

 troublesome to grape as well as cherry growers, 

 and I know men who are threatening to shoot 

 them next year. But there are two sides to this 

 question. The grape crop would be a precarious 

 one if its insect enemies were not kept in check, 

 and there is no protector so efficient as the birds. 

 Save your cherries and grapes if you can, but 

 better lose a large portion ttan kill the birds 

 (p. 26). 



In the stomachs of meadow-larks he found 

 oats and wheat and thousand legs {Julus), 

 and in one of a crow shot in February a few 

 beetles and about fifty grasshoppers. 



Some of th^se, he says, were of the variety so 

 plentiful late in fall, but the greater part were of 

 that kind that we find in the spring about half 

 grown, and not yet having their wings matured — 

 such as are at full size in July. Many do not 

 know that grasshoppers live through the winter; 

 many do not know that crows eat insects. The 

 farmers, when they see flocks of crows ransacking 

 their fields and meadows, instead of offering 

 bounties for their destruction, should be thankful 



