578 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. [Vow XXXII. 
mice (chiefly meadow mice) and insects. The remainder of 
their diet is made up largely of other snakes and reptiles, 
birds, batrachia, and fish. Undoubtedly Dr. Fisher recognizes 
the economic importance of the majority of our reptilia and 
batrachia, yet one cannot escape the suspicion that he has 
practically classed these as noxious because he has not taken 
the pains to declare them beneficial. He includes the swallow- 
tailed kite in the small list of those hawks “ wholly beneficial ” 
to the farmer. The tabulated lists and reports show that the 
food of this species is largely made up of insects, also of snakes, 
lizards, and other reptiles whose diet is quite as beneficial to 
agriculture, perhaps, as that of the kite. Nevertheless, the - 
doctor says: “The snakes, lizards, and frogs it destroys, 
though by no means injurious to agriculture, probably will be 
regretted by few.” We cannot but deprecate such a statement 
from such a source, for, though it does not condemn these ani- 
mals, it implies that they are inferior or insignificant in the 
economic scale, —an imputation utterly without warrant, and 
serving to perpetuate the popular idea of their worthlessness. 
The case of the swallowtail may serve as a striking illustra- 
tion of nature’s mysterious balance of good and evil : 
That not a worm is cloven in vain, 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire, 
Or but subserves another’s gain. 
On the basis of Dr. Fisher’s statistics we will suppose a 
swallow-tailed kite to eat 100 insects, 2 chameleons (Anolis), 
1 lizard (Sceloporus), and 3 grass snakes (Cyclopis) in one’ day. 
At first thought this should gladden our hearts. But an ento- 
mologist will say that 50 of those insects are tiger beetles, dragon 
flies, and wasps, the two former destroying hundreds of other 
insects, while the latter captures numerous flies and spiders 
daily. Avoiding the query as to what kind of insects the other 
insects eat, the herpetologist declares that the chameleons and 
the lizard and the green snakes daily devour among themselves 
about a thousand insects great and small. On the insect basis 
alone the problems of good and bad in this case are infinitely 
multiplied. From that point of view it looks, at best, like a 
