LANDLORD TO THE BIRDS 5 



sown to weeds with such a pile, and the weeks upon 

 weeks of labor necessary to harrow them out, you 

 hardly need to be told further that the combined 

 sparrow family (not including the pestiferous Eng- 

 lish sparrow) probably saved the farmers of the 

 United States in 1910 $89,260,000. 



Doesn't it begin to be apparent why the destruc- 

 tion of 2,000,000 birds a year in one state alone, by 

 cats, is a serious affair? If all those birds had been 

 sparrows that would mean a daily increase of 

 32,000 pounds in the number of weed seeds allowed 

 to ripen, and possibly to germinate, in Massa- 

 chusetts alone. Of course it doesn't mean quite 

 that, for many birds do not live on weed seeds. 

 On the other hand, many of them live on even 

 more objectionable insects and tree pests. The 

 economic loss is very clear and very serious. 



Here is a paragraph from the same bulletin 

 quoted above: 



It is interesting to observe that hungry birds — and birds 

 are hungry most of the time — are not content to fill their 

 stomachs with insects or seeds, but, after the stomach is 

 stuffed until it will hold no more, continue to eat till the 

 crop or gullet also is crammed. It is often the case that 

 when the stomach is opened and the contents piled up the 

 pile is two or three times as large as the stomach was when 

 filled. Birds may truly be said to have healthy appetites. 

 To show the astonishing capacity of birds' stomachs and to 

 reveal the extent to which man is indebted to birds for the 

 destruction of noxious insects, the following facts are given 

 as learned by stomach examinations made by assistants of 

 the Biological Survey : 



"A tree-swallow's stomach was found to contain 40 entire 

 chinch-bugs and fragments of many others, besides 10 other 

 species of insects. A bank-swallow in Texas devoured 68 



