152 USEFUL BIRDS. 
fruit from the attacks of all the too numerous insects that 
are introduced and fostered by his methods. The bird is 
designed to assist in carrying on nature’s work in maintain- 
ing such a balance of her forces as will allow the production 
of a natural fruitage. Birds merely perform a service in 
the orchard similar to their natural work in the woodland, 
by protecting the tree from the enemies which, under normal 
conditions, attack its different members. In the mean time, 
birds feed to a greater or less extent on the fruit which they 
protect. While such service as they may render in direct 
protection of the fruit should be placed to their credit, they 
cannot be expected to deviate much from those habits which 
they have contracted under natural conditions, or to make 
any special effort to assist man in producing an unnatural 
surplus of fruit. Birds are not as essential to the orchard 
of the intelligent, enterprising, modern fruit grower, who 
sprays his trees and cares for them in every possible way, 
as they are to those of ordinary mortals. Nevertheless, so 
long as human nature continues as it is to-day, the birds will 
always be a great help in the orchards of the poor, or of those 
who for various reasons have not the spare time or money 
necessary to enable them to care for their trees in the most 
approved and scientific way. 
A series of poison sprays used for the destruction of the 
codling moth will destroy most other leaf-eating insects, and 
so protect both fruit and foliage. There is, however, a host 
of tiny insects that are not affected by any amount of arseni- 
cal spraying, — insects so small, indeed, that their presence is 
seldom noticed until the injury done by them has progressed 
so far as to destroy the fruit. Such insects are the plant lice 
and their allies, the bark lice, scales, and all the lilliputian 
host that unnoticed sucks out the juices of the tree from 
trunk, limbs, twigs, leaves, or fruit. Warblers, Titmice, 
Creepers, and Nuthatches are often very efficient helps in 
holding the increase of such insects in check. 
As an instance of the unnoticed beneficial guardianship of 
the birds over our orchard trees, I will relate a recent expe- 
rience of my own. ‘The reader has already been told how 
in the spring of 1905 I left my trees to the tender mer- 
