42 SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. 
little golden gourmand was only one of perhaps a thousand 
insect-eating birds in that timber tract. How many millions 
of injurious insects must be destroyed in a single season, 
all of which, if permitted to live, would prey on the vitals of 
vegetable life ! 
On a hot summer day I sat for an hour and a half on the 
top of a rail fence, watching a mother Dickcissel (Spéza 
americana) feeding her bantlings in the grass. The sun 
broiled, and I boiled—or, at least, my blood did. Still I 
kept my temper sweet, my interest in the little drama enacted 
before me lending a saccharine element, I doubt not. The 
little madam was kept very busy with her housewifely duties. 
Timing her with my watch, I found that she often flew 
away and returned to her brood with an insect in a half 
minute, sometimes in a quarter of a minute; she was seldom 
gone more than a whole minute, though once or twice an 
interval of two minutes elapsed. It is not to be supposed 
that she kept up such vigorous assiduity for a whole day, 
though why her nestlings required so much food at that 
particular time I do not know. Possibly it was meal-time 
with them. But if a bird should destroy even 400 insects 
during the 14 or 15 working hours of a summer day, in the 
months of May, June and July, it would rid the fields and 
woods of 36,800 insects—a service by no means to be 
despised. Nature has adapted these insects to the require- 
ments of bird-life for reasons of her own, and hence has 
endowed them with a wonderful procreative power; and, 
therefore, man should be careful how he destroys this 
wisely established balance. Playing at see-saw with nature 
is always a dangerous pastime. 
Even Hawks and Owls serve a useful purpose, and are 
rather man’s friends than his foes, as has been conclusively 
proved in the report recently issued on these birds by the 
United States Department of Agriculture. Heretofore we 
have thought that Hawks and Owls ought to be slain indis- 
criminately. A Hawk was a Hawk, and his only use was to 
