50 
INTRODUCTION. 
its growth by a portion of the incessores : our 
grains may be stripped off when just ripe, or torn 
up when newly springing from the ground ; the 
shoots of our young trees and the buds of the 
orchard may be bruised, and our choicest fruits 
may be plundered, or rendered useless. These 
injuries, however, may be generally prevented by 
some attention at the proper seasons, when the 
species are so numerous as to become annoying ; 
and in a country where cultivation is not exten- 
sively practised, the inducement to flock towards 
large and artificial stores of favourite food does 
not exist, and the proportion of the produce to 
that of the consumers is naturally kept up. But 
even in those districts where inattention on the part 
of the proprietor would soon permit considerable 
loss, we have abundant compensation in the num- 
bers of insects and their larvae, which are consumed 
during the season of incubation by the very birds 
which are at other times most hurtful to his crops. 
There is not a vegetable production which we 
cultivate, from the strongest forest tree to the 
most tender garden flower, that is not liable to 
the attacks of multitudes of insects, and though 
tiny in their form and weapons, and insidious in 
their mode of attack, the consequences are not 
less severe and fatal. The depredations which 
they have been known to commit, are many thou- 
sand times greater and more extended than the 
worst attacks of the feathered creation, and we 
cannot look upon this large group of birds, all of 
them wholly or partially insectivorous, otherwise 
