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 {Spiza 

 americand) 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. Plapng 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 



