274 NATURE’S MEANS OF LIMITING THE NUMBERS OF INSECTS. 
and squirrels. It is well known that the skunk, if not an entirely 
inoffensive animal, is exceedingly useful. Its food consists mainly 
of insects, and those among the most injurious, such as the May ` 
beetle or dorbug. „Mink and weasels eat insects, and squirrels as 
I am told, besides eating nuts, will in times of hunger eat the 
chrysalides of insects. It is known that all the smaller oe 
peds, even the fox, will eat insects when other food is wanting. — 
It is said that little harm results from shooting birds in antun 
as the breeding season is over, and the birds are migrating south- 
ward, but in the southern states they will prove as useful to agri- 
culture there during their long winter residence, and it is a selfish 
policy that would injure the prosperity of farmers in one section 
of the country, merely. to afford a day’s barbarous pleasure l 
the inhabitants of another. Those birds which are shot in consid- 
erable numbers at such times, as’ partridges and quail, are inset- : 
tivorous as well as vegetarians, and of late years the quail has 
been known to render essential service in Cones ra Colorado 
potato beetle. 
In fact this indiscriminate slaughter of small queda and i 
birds tends to destroy the balance of nature. That there is a law 
of equilibrium in the distribution of the. numbers of animals may : 
be seen on à moment’s examination of well known facts. The 
codfish is. known to lay several hundreds of thousands of eggs 
and yet such is the destruction of life, that few of the eggs | 
left untouched by other animals; and of the young that hatch 
may be safely said that only a pair of adult fish remain. 
two eggs of the original hundreds of thousands result in 
plishing the end for which so many were laid. So among the i 
sects. The queen bee is known sometimes to lay during her W 
life more than a million eggs; during the height of the breee 
season, under the most favorable circumstances, laying from 
- thousand to three thousand eggs, and yet how slight is the mem 
in the numbers of the honey bee. It would be an interesting : 
to trace out the causes that cut short the lives of so many 
Then look at the aphides or plant lice, with their anomalous Y 
reproduction, by which the young are produced like the buds 
tree. One virgin plant louse was found by Bonnet to bring 
on an average about one hundred young, and so on for ten 8° 
tions : now D opi the mamus of young PEP by titose 0f i 
ten broods „and w 1,000, OU, UY 
+ 
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U HAYO ULIG 
