Wild Birds in liekUion to Agriculture, 
329 
berries and assimilated the pulpy part, the American crow can 
eject by the mouth clean and polished seeds. 
The official report goes on to say there is lamentable ignorance 
of the various species of birds which are in the habit of ejecting 
by the mouth seeds taken with their food. 
Turning now from new American lamps of science to furbish 
up old ones in England, ray attention was called by an obliging 
correspondent to the “ Report of the Wild Birds Protection 
Committee of the House of Commons of 1873,” to be hereafter 
cited by me in this paper as the Commons’ Committee. I 
question whether, in the department of science now under dis- 
cussion, from that date to this any real advance has been made 
in England. Any way — faide de mieux — this Report is an 
admirable text-book of all that was then known of economic 
ornithology, a very mine of wealth in which the proposed 
English school of economic ornithologists could dig for precious 
nuggets of ornithological gold, to be afterwards added to and 
cast and recast and beaten out into shapes and forms demanded 
by the increased knowledge and exigencies of our day. 
As already observed, the science of Econojnic Ornithology is 
immediately complementary to that of Economic Entomology.* 
I’reviously it has been well said in the new American Report, 
a statement anticipated in the old English Report, that : “ Two 
kinds of life are closely co-ordinated,” that is to say, bird life to 
a gi-eat extent exists on insect life.''^ Accordingly, I applied, in 
reference to this paper, to the fountain head of British Applied 
Entomology, and Miss E. A. Ormerod, Honorary Consulting 
Entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society, to whom I am 
especially grateful, and to whom all agriculturists should be 
grateful, has favoured me with the following letter, dated June 
6 last, which m extenso I now gladly give to my readers : — 
In reply to your letter on the subject of Economic Ornithology received 
yesterday, I can most truly say that I believe that the spread of plain and 
sound information as to the habits of our common wild birds would be of 
great importance agricultural!}'. 
Just noting first (in reference to your Lordship’s remarks as to the 
study in its connection with insect crop ravages) some of the special services 
rendered hy different kinds of birds, in neutralising different kinds of insect 
attacks, or attacks on special crops, I think the following summary of obser- 
vations put in my hands in 1879 by Mr. F. Norgate, of Sparham, Norfolk, 
‘ It is estimated tl at some day nearly a million different forms will be 
recorded. Insects oulimuiber all tiie other members of the Animal Kingdom. 
They have a wonderful power of acclimati.'^ation. Insect life may be from 
seven years to twenty-four hours. Metamorphosis — transformation — is a fasci- 
nating study. 
- 273. N.B. — The numbers refer tbiovghout to the Evidence, Commons’ 
Committee, 
