1865.] Buckman on the Depredations of Insects. 431 



the former were nearly destroyed, while the latter as nearly escaped 

 altogether. So in an adjoining field belonging to a neighbour, there 

 is now a fine crop of grey peas almost untouched. Curtis, in his 

 ' Farm Insects,' says, " From the imperfect and slender data relating 

 to insects connected with agriculture, it is frequently difficult, if not 

 impossible, to form any opinion as to the simultaneous or periodical 

 appearance of the different species ; and with regard to these Weevils, 

 all that can be stated is, that certain seasons seem to favour their 

 multiplication, and others to check it. It is evident that if not 

 checked, there is not a crop, whether in the field or garden, that would 

 escape destruction ; and this check, probably in every instance, might 

 be traced to the agency of other insects, especially parasitic species, 

 which I have so often shown are destined to the service of man."* 



But now the question arises whether the parasites referred to by 

 Curtis have not some good assistants in this goodly work of destroying 

 noxious insects. 



Now it happens that about my farm there are, amongst other birds, 

 hundreds of larks, Alauda vulgaris, and white water wagtails, Motacilla 

 alba. My pupil, A. Taylor, Esq., has occasionally shot specimens of 

 these and other species, and has examined them in order to determine 

 their food; in the crop of a lark fr-om this very field were several of 

 these weevils, and in the gizzard a complete debris of small insects. 

 In the wagtail, from the same field, the crop was full of weevils, and 

 in the gizzard, a mass of elytra of these and other small beetles. 



A reed-warbler (Silvia arundinacea) again from the farm, had in 

 the gizzard twenty-five beetles of different species. 



This then seems to be the tendency for good of some small birds ; 

 so much so indeed that if they were allowed fair play, I believe that 

 this periodical superabundance of insects from which our crops fre- 

 quently suffer would be rendered next to impossible. 



As a curious illustration of what even seed-eating birds do, I may 

 direct attention to a hedge sparrow, Fringilla montana, shot in the pea- 

 field. In its gizzard were found several hundreds of the seeds of the 

 Chenopodium album, a weed which was very troublesome in a potato 

 crop of the former season. All sparrows then are not mischievous, 

 nor indeed any, at all times. 



It seems then from the foregoing that crops are liable to a variety 

 of insect attacks ; as these injuries were supposed to result from birds, 

 the birds have been destroyed as enemies, while a knowledge of the 

 real truth should lead us to preserve them as friends. 



In the case before us, were it not that a very much-used path 

 skirted the pea crop, the injury I have described would, in all proba- 

 bility, have been kept under by the birds, a fact which in this and in 

 other instances has led me to attempt plans to prevent their molestation, 

 rather than to adopt that everlasting opposition to them which has 

 been productive of so much mischief. 



* P. 347. 



