324 Natures Militia 



of any kind, either to give them shelter or to need their 

 protection. But it is here that the very worst of insect- 

 plagues are hatched. Locusts lay their eggs in the hot 

 sand, and there seems to be no appropriate enemy on 

 the spot to reduce their numbers. As soon as tl:ey 

 take to flight, indeed, which they are compelled 

 to do for the sake of food, they are followed and set 

 upon by flocks of birds, but their numbers are 

 then so large that they are masters of the situa- 

 tion, and devastate any district upon which they 

 settle. 



It is, nowever, only when they come down upon 

 cultivated lands that we hear of their ravages, and 

 since, as before said, cultivation in most cases diminishes ' 

 the number of the trees and with them of the birds, it 

 is perhaps a question whether, in a state of nature, the 

 birds might not even then be fairly a match for them. 

 They seem to be so, at all events, in the Khivan oasis 

 of Turkestan ; for though the locusts arrive there in 

 clouds, often several miles Jlong, they are at once set 

 upon by multitudes of small birds. But then Khiva 

 abounds both in birds and in planted groves, and its 

 inhabitants apparently know better than some Euro- 

 peans the value of their defenders. 



However, there are probably few people in the present 

 day who would seriously dispute the value of such birds 

 as live upon insects only. It is when we come to mixed 

 feeders, such as the sparrow and the rook, that opinions 

 are divided. 



A fierce battle rages round the sparrow. He is 

 accused of stealing corn and fruit, and of. heartlessly 

 destroying crocuses for the sake of the unformed 

 seeds. In some districts he is persecuted without 



