INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 245 



and furnished with a curious apparatus of muscles to enable 

 them to throw it forward with great force. Some species 

 spit the insects on their tongue, and thus bring them into 

 their mouth. In America, the tree-creeper is furnished with 

 a box at the end of a long pole to entice it to build in 

 gardens, which it is found to be particularly useful in clearing 

 from noxious insects. 



Amongst the GrallcB or Waders, many of the long-billed 

 birds eat the larvae of insects as well as worms ; and they 

 form also no inconsiderable part of the food of our domestic 

 poultry, especially turkeys, which may be daily seen busily 

 engaged in hunting for them, and, as well as ducks, will 

 greedily devour the larger insects, as cockchafers, and in 

 North America CicadcE. Mr. Sheppard was much amused, 

 one day in July, with observing a cow which had taken 

 refuge in a pond, probably from the gad-fly, and was standing 

 nearly up to its belly in water. A fleet of ducks surrounded 

 it, which kept continually jumping at the flies that alighted 

 upon it. The cow, as if sensible of the service they were 

 rendering her, stood perfectly still, though assailed and pecked 

 on all sides by them. The partridge takes her young brood 

 to an ant-hill, where they feast upon the larvae and pupae, 

 which Swammerdam informs us were sold at market in his 

 time to feed various kinds of birds. ^ Dr. Clarke also men- 

 tions having seen them, as well as the ants themselves, ex- 

 posed to sale in the market at Moscow as a food for nightin- 

 gales.^ Latreille tells us that singing birds are fed in France 

 with the larvae of the horse-ant (^Formica rufa). 



But the Linnean order of Passeres affords the greatest 

 number of insectivorous birds ; indeed, almost all the species of 

 this order, except perhaps the pigeon-tribe, and the cross-bill 

 and other Loxise, more or less eat insects. Amongst the 

 thrush tribe, the blackbird, though he will have his share of' 

 our gooseberries and currants, assists greatly in clearing our 

 gardens of caterpillars ; and the locust-eating thrush is still 

 more useful in the countries subject to that dreadful pest: 

 these birds never appear but with the locusts, and then ac- 



1 Bib. Nat. I 126. b. 2 Travels,!. 110. 



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