Wihl Jiirds in Itelatlon to Agriculhlre. 
327 
The ornithological division of the United States Government 
Department has in five short years made rapid advances ; and it 
is of the utmost importance that the carefully-placed footsteps 
of the division should be laboriously traced, as we ourselves, the 
fellow-countrymen of Gilbert White and of Thomas Bewick ' — our 
English school of Economic Ornithology — must run after that of 
our American cousins ; and happy shall we be if, handicapped 
as we are, we can ever in this matter overtake their energetic 
endeavours. 
The new line of American investigation^ in the outset leads 
to these conclusions ; few injurious insects can be considered 
without reference to their liability to be devoured by natural 
enemies, and especially birds. Hence the inter-relation between 
birds and insects, a theme necessarily bearing on applied orni- 
thology — these relations are most complicated. The interest of 
the farming community is especially in the food habits of birds, 
and food habits have intimate entomological bearings. 
There is an American Ornithologists’ Union, a sort of federa- 
tion of natural history clubs, and much is to be gained by the 
State co-operating with this union. Information is obtained 
by the personal observation of field agents ; by the co-operation 
of intelligent observers on the farm, in field, orchard, and forest ; 
in the collection and analysis of stomach contents, and by the 
collation of ah’eady published accounts. Circulars and schedules 
are sent to a thousand persons, unionists and others. To secure 
exact data blank forms were issued, a cursory investigation of 
which has developed ornithological facts hitherto unsuspected. 
Ladies are employed in the entomological investigations. More 
than 1 ,500 Ixjttles of stomach contents have been already ob- 
tained, for examination, anaU'sis, and determination. 
In 1 887, the State Report mentions work done in the col- 
lection of facts regarding the English sparrow, a sad Trans- 
atlantic scourge; on bird migration; also, in a tabular form, a 
report on the food of hawks and owds. On 1,072 of these birds 
post-mortem examinations were held. A hawk’s crop, it was 
found,'may contain representatives of the seven primary gi-oups — 
namely, a field-mouse, a sparrow, a snake, a frog, a grasshopper, 
an earthworm, and a snail. There were experiments also in 
poisoning sparrows, but they are wary birds ; when wnthout an 
' Wiite with his pen, Bewick with his pencil, have in England popularised 
ornithology. 
“ Report, 1885. I much regret that the set of the U.S.A. Reports State 
Agricultural Department in the library of R.A.S.E. is incomplete ; I conse- 
quently could not consult the vols. for 1886-1889. — C, 
