50 
The Purple Martin 
The Indian’s 
Way 
Social 
Joys 
parts of both continents. Their nests were then made in hollow trees 
or in caves, but these rude retreats have now been entirely abandoned, 
except among remote mountains. The red man, a true lover of nature, 
invited the cheerful Martin to remain about his lodge by erecting a 
pole on which he hung a hollowed gourd as an attractive nesting-place. 
In the South it is still the practice to follow the 
Indian’s example of putting up poles, from the tops of 
which are suspended by cross-bars a cluster of gourds, 
each pierced with an entrance-hole. Sometimes colonies of eight or ten 
pairs are collected for the season in this way. 
The birds are considered of value to the raiser of poultry, in 
addition to the enjoyment of their cheerful chattering and short, snatchy 
songs, because of their readiness to attack any hawk or crow that 
comes to the neighborhood. Elsewhere, and throughout the North, 
houses, sometimes very ornate in design, are erected for the same 
purpose. 
Does anything in the bird-world represent home-life and community 
of interest as well as a colony of Martins? Contentment, happiness, 
prosperity are there, and the cheerful social twitter of the Martins, and 
their industrious habits, are a continual sermon from the air to their 
brothers of the earth. The only note of discord in 
one of these happy colony-houses is from the pug- 
nacious English Sparrow, that covets the comfortable 
homes of the Martins, and tries to evict the rightful owners, and to sub- 
stitute his harsh, disagreeable chatter for their pleasant voices. 
The value of the Martin to the human race is very great. The birds 
are so preeminently aerial that their food necessarily consists of flying 
insects. Among these may be some of the dreaded species of mosquito 
that convey malarial and yellow fevers. Every mosquito, therefore, 
that is destroyed by a Martin, or, in fact, by any bird, lessens by so 
much the chance of the spread of fever-plagues. Human lives are 
sacrificed every year ; vast sums of money are expended for investigation 
and prevention of yellow fever, yet in some localities where this scourge is 
found the Martin is not understood and appreciated as a preventive 
agency, as it should be. If one human life is saved each year through the 
destruction of fever-bearing mosquitos by the Martins, 
Mosquitos or ky an y other of the many mosquito-eating birds, it 
is a sufficient reason why the lives of these valuable 
birds should be sacred. 
The Martin is known to feed on other injurious insects. Dr. Alpheus 
Packard found one of the compartments of a Martin-box “literally 
packed with the dried remains of a little yellow and black squash-beetle” ; 
and “ten Nebraska specimens examined by Professor Aughey, had eaten 
265 locusts and 161 other insects.” 
In portions of the northern range of the Martin it is undoubtedly 
decreasing in numbers, and the houses that once were animated by its 
welcome presence are now deserted. 
