HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 115 



houses in their gardens and enclosures. This custom was probably derived 

 from the aborigines, who were in the habit of furnishing a hospitable retreat 

 for the purple martin, by fixing hollow gourds or calabashes upon the bran- 

 ches of trees near their cabins. It is generally believed that these active 

 little birds serve, by their unceasing annoyances, to drive away the hawks 

 and crows from their vicinity, performing thereby an essential service to the 

 farmer. This pleasing and useful custom has of late years grown unaccount- 

 ably into disuse. The chattering of swallows is one of the delightful accom- 

 paniments of a vernal morning ; and that of the martin, in particular, is the 

 most enlivening of all sounds from animated nature. As the birds of the 

 swallow-tribe subsist upon insects that inhabit the atmosphere, it is not in 

 our power to increase their means of subsistence. Hence the only means 

 we can use for increasing their numbers is to supply them with a shelter and 

 retreat. By such appliances it would be easy to keep their numbers up to 

 a level with the quantities of insects that constitute their prey. 



The wren and the blue-bird are encouraged by similar accommodations. 

 Bat as these birds are not social in their habits, a separate box must be sup- 

 plied for each pair of birds. The wren is an indefatigable destroyer of in- 

 sects, and one of the most interesting of our familiar songsters, singing like 

 the riser, during the heat of the day, when most other birds are silent. The 

 blue-bird, which is hardly less familiar, delights in the hollow branch of an 

 old tree in the orchard, but would be equally satisfied with an artificial imi- 

 tation of the rude conveniences supplied him by nature. 



If we observe all these requirements, when employed in tilling a farm or 

 in laying out a country-seat, we do but avoid the destruction of those beauti- 

 ful relations which nature has established through the earth. The plough 

 and the scythe may do their work for man, without interfering with the 

 wants of those creatures whom nature has appointed as the enliveners of his 

 toil. Every estate might be made to represent the whole country, in its till- 

 ed fields and cultivated lawn, with their proper admixture of forest, thicket 

 and primitive herbage. Then, while sitting at our windows, the eye would 

 be delighted by the signt of little coppices of wild shrubbery, with their un- 

 dergrowth of mosses, ferns and Christmas evergreens, rising in the midst of 

 the smooth lawn, and in charming opposition to the flower-beds, that are dis- 

 tributed in other parts of the ground. In these miniature wilds, the small 

 birds would find a shelter, suited to all their wants and instincts, and in re- 

 turn for our hospitality, would act as the sentinels of our orchards and gar- 

 dens, and the musicians to attend us in our daily labor and recreations. 



Beverly, March, l$o±.—Hovey'8 Magazine, 



