124 THE BIRDS OF ATJSTKALIA 



that the ancient Egyptians, recognising the enormous value to 

 agriculturists of the species which frequented the Nile Valley, 

 proclaimed the bird as sacred, and made it a crime 

 punishable by law to injure or destroy an Ibis, Mr. Madden 

 goes on to describe the thoroughness with which the Australian 

 Ibis clears a district of locust and cricket, the take-all and the 

 harvest caterpillar, and other dire enemies of the farmer. 

 "Watch a flock of Ibis on an autumn day on ground which is 

 cracked by the heat of the previous summer, and where the 

 crickets have effected a lodgment. Before the birds come the 

 land is alive with these ravenous insects. When a flock of Ibis 

 arrive they settle on one spot and pick, and pick, and pick by 

 the hour. Then the crickets which have so far escaped become 

 frightened, and disappear into the cracks in the ground, and 

 the Ibis rise and seek a fresh place and commence operations 

 there. When the crickets left in the first patch find that the 

 birds are gone, they come out to graze, as they are as ravenous 

 for grass as the Ibis are for crickets; and this the birds well 

 know, and when they have reduced the second point of attack 

 to the same condition as the first was in when they left it, they 

 return to the first, and remain while a single cricket remains 

 above ground, and so from place to place. Examine a place 

 where locusts have deposited their eggs after it has been visited 

 by a flock of Ibis, and you will find the ground as full of holes 

 as a cullender. These holes are made by the powerful beak of 

 the Ibis being driven into the ground to reach the eggs or newly- 

 hatched insects, and the millions of the pest they thus destroy 

 can only be imagined." 



' ' I remember a most lovely crop of malting barley, which was 

 grown close to the railway station at Camperdewn. I saw it 

 just as it was becoming fit to cut, and admired it greatly. Three 

 days afterwards there was hardly a grain of corn to be seen of 

 it. The caterpillars had cut off all the heads, and the farmer 

 had to turn his stock in to eat the fallen grain. That autumn 

 the Ibis came, not in battalions or regiments, but in whole army 

 corps, and stayed during the winter, and for three years after- 

 wards hardly a single harvest caterpillar was to be seen. ' ' And 

 many farmers haven't the common sense to protect these useful 

 and enerp'etic friends ! 



