ELLIOTT COUES. 1 7 



furnished by certain insects, became to the tiller of the soil 

 an innumerable host of new enemies, a myriad plague. In 

 fine, birds and insects both assumed new relations to the 

 human race when agriculture began, and this relation was on 

 the part of birds helpful, on the part of insects hurtful, with 

 few exceptions in either case. Nay, more ; the pristine 

 farmer we have in mind had not only to contend with insects 

 as they were when agriculture was first practised, but with 

 increasing numbers to which tilling of the soil and cultivation 

 of plants gave rise ; for every farmer breeds insects which 

 would not exist but for his labor, as surely as he raises stock 

 upon his land. It also happens to be a fact in nature, that 

 the bird-world and the insect-world are things apart, separate 

 and antagonistic. Nearly all birds are insectivorous, to 

 some extent, and very many birds eat nothing but insects. 

 In their reciprocal relations, bird-life and insect-life offer one 

 of the most remarkable systems of checks and balances to 

 be observed in all nature ; and with no natural order of 

 things can man interfere with impunity. The damage done 

 to agriculture by noxious insects is simply incalculable ; no 

 expert entomologist hesitates to place it at many millions of 

 dollars a year, in our own or any other great country where 

 farming is a national industrj'^ and a main source of wealth. 

 This result is in spite of all the contrivances which the 

 ingenuity of man has devised to hold insects in check ; and 

 all his efforts to that end are insignificant in comparison with 

 the silent, ceaseless work done by birds in his behalf. It is 

 not too much to say that successful agriculture would be 

 impracticable without the help of birds ; and I do not think 

 more need be said, from the standpoint of sheer utilitarianism. 

 The usefulness of birds as insecticides is measurable in 

 money — and that is something everybody can understand. 



Thus the birds are a great army, self-equipped, self- 

 maintained and self-ordained, to wage war on a grand scale 

 against our national foes, their natural prey. Yet this is not 

 the whole of their good work. They campaign against many 



