PRACTICAL ARBORICULTURE 75 
As year by year the area of the cultivated lands greatly increased and the 
extent of wild forest as rapidly diminished, so also have the birds disappeared. 
and, of a natural consequence, the insect world has as greatly increased, until, 
at the present time, each plant grown by the farmer, gardener and fruit 
grower is attacked by myriads of insect enemies and the grower must wage 
a ceaseless warfare in order to secure his share of the products. 
As certain trees of the forest have been exterminated, the bugs and 
worms that feed upon them have been forced to find other plants in the cul- 
tivated lands on which to prey. 
The increase in population has also caused a diminution of the number 
of game birds, as the demand for food seemed to require. At the same time 
the secret hiding-places for nests have been removed with the destruction of 
the forests, hence many birds seek other locations in which to breed. 
In some of our western prairie states a few years since, there were large 
numbers of quail and prairie fowls. This region was visited by a scourge of 
locusts Which came late in the summer of 1878. The corn, grass, vegetables 
and trees Were ruined in a very short time after their visitation. 
The females deposited untold myriads of eggs in the hard trodden 
roads, fields and woods, and then died. 
Many of the inhabitants, having lost everything they possessed except 
the land, felt obliged to make hunting the winter’s occupation to keep from 
suffering. 
Hundreds of car loads of birds were shipped to the markets of the Eastern 
cities during the winter. 
Spring came, and with the warm days the hatching of the grasshoppers, 
at first so very small that a quail might eat a hundred before its hunger would 
be appeased. But there were no quails. A family of prairie chickens might 
require several thousand daily, but there were no birds left to devour the now 
rapidly growing ‘hoppers. 
With the springing up of the young corn and grain, onward came the 
army of locusts, now beyond the power of man to vanquish, and a second 
time the crops were destroyed before the insects were large enough to fly 
away. The balance provided by the Almighty between birds and insects had been 
destroyed by man. 
As a result several of the Western States were retarded in their pros- 
perity and did not recover for several years. It would be impossible to esti- 
mate the suffering caused, much of which might have been averted had not 
this wholesale destruction of birds taken place. 
The planting and maintaining of additional woodlands, more especially 
if there were also thickets, or dense undergrowths, would do much toward 
encouraging the birds, and, if their number is increased there must be a cor- 
responding reduction in the number of insects which are now so destructive 
to all cultivated crops, and also a large increase of game birds for human food. 
Destruction of forests reduces the number of birds and quite naturally 
insects multiply as a result. 
Protect the birds; increase the forests, and insect pests will gradually 
cease their annoyance. 
