﻿524 Canadmn Record of Science. 



fruit is grown, it is no great loss to give up one tree to the 

 birds ; and in some cases the crop can be protected by 

 scarecrows. Where wild fruit is not abundant, a few 

 fruit-bearing shrubs and vines judiciously planted will 

 serve for ornament and provide food for tlie birds. The 

 Kussian mulberry is a vigorous grower and a profuse 

 bearer, ripening at the same time as the cherry, and, so 

 far as observation has gone, most birds seem to prefer its 

 fruit to any other. It is believed that a number of these 

 trees planted around the garden or orchard would fully 

 protect the more valuable fruits. 



Many persons have written about the delicate discrim- 

 ination of birds for choice fruit, asserting that only the 

 finest and costliest varieties are selected. This is contrary 

 to all careful scientific observation. Birds, unlike human 

 beings, seem to prefer fruit like the mulberry, that is 

 sweetly insipid, or that has some astringent or bitter 

 quality like the chokecherry or holly. The so-called black 

 alder (Ilex verticillata), which is a species of holly, has 

 bright scarlet berries, as bitter as quinine, that ripen late 

 in October, and remain on the bushes through November, 

 and though frost grapes, the fruit of the Virginia creeper, 

 and several species of dogwood are abundant at the same 

 time, the birds eat the berries of the holly to a consider- 

 able extent, as sTiown by the seeds found in the stomachs. 

 It is moreover a remarkable fact that the wild fruits upon 

 which the birds feed largely are those which man neither 

 gathers for his own use nor adopts for cultivation. 



THE BLUEBIRD. 

 (Sialia sialis.J 



The common and familiar bluebird is an inhabitant of 

 all the States east of the Kocky Mountains, from the Gulf 

 of Mexico northward into Canada. It winters as far 

 north as Southern Illinois, in the Mississippi Valley, and 

 Pennsylvania in the east ; in spring it is one of the 



