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- 



