1878 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
313 
The Cedar-bird. 
The fanner or fruit-grower has a way of 
classifying birds very different from that of the 
naturalist. He makes two great classes only, 
friends and foes, and his 
chief interest in any given 
species is to know in which 
class to place it. Unfor¬ 
tunately, the boundary be¬ 
tween these two divisions is 
a not very definite one, and 
if we were asked upon which 
side to place the Cedar-bird 
we should have to give the 
Frenchman’s ever-ready an¬ 
swer, “That depends.” If 
the bird be watched during 
grub-lime—we mean the 
season of grubs — when 
caterpillars, tent and others, 
and worms, canker and 
others, do mostly abound, it 
would be ranked at once 
among the useful ones. All 
these soft creeping things, 
so destructive to foliage, are 
choice morsels to young 
Cedar-birds, and the old 
ones display an industry in 
removing these enemies to 
our trees and shrubs that is 
none the less useful to us on 
account of its being prompt¬ 
ed by a selfish motive in 
them. The little family in 
the nest must be fed, and 
the busy parents in foraging 
for their young dispose of 
multitudes of our annoying 
insects. But in cherry-time! 
Then the Cedar-bird ap¬ 
pears in altogether a dif¬ 
ferent light. One of their little flocks—they 
usually go in squads of a dozen or twenty—will 
make cherries disappear with a rapidity only 
equaled by a boy who is in somebody else’s 
cherry-tree, and is afraid the owner will catch 
him. The young birds seem by this time to 
have become de¬ 
cided vegetarians. 
Animal food was 
well enough in cool¬ 
er weather and for 
growing young, but 
in the hot July days 
old and young pre¬ 
fer the refreshing 
fruit. At this sea¬ 
son, the fruit-grower 
is quite sure that 
the Cedar-bird be¬ 
longs among his 
enemies, and forget¬ 
ful of former good 
offices bangs away 
at him with a clear 
conscience. It is 
not the cherry alone 
that this bird fan¬ 
cies, but apples and 
other fruits are quite 
to its taste; but per¬ 
haps we notice the 
loss of the early 
fruit more readily. 
When the cherries disappear as fast as they 
ripen, we are not in the proper mental con¬ 
dition to strike a fair balance-sheet with the 
birds. If the insects were unmolested, there 
would be no leaves, and consequently no fruit. 
If the birds take all the insects, and then take 
all the fruit, we are just where we would have 
been had the birds not visited us. The question 
the cedar-bikd. —(Ampelis cedrorunx.) 
seems to be, Can we not raise fruit enough for 
the birds and ourselves, too? In a natural 
state of things, the balance between plant, in¬ 
sect, and bird is well enough preserved, neither 
predominating to the serious detriment of the 
other. If the insect-eating birds become too 
numerous, bird-eating birds and other animals 
keep them in check. Iu our cultivation, we 
have disturbed this nice adjustment of things. 
By destroying the natural food of insects we 
concentrate them upon our cultivated plants, 
and as a matter of course the birds follow the 
insects. Fruit-growing, like all other cultiva¬ 
tion, is a constant struggle with difficulties, and 
this problem of the relation 
of birds to horticulture is 
one of the difficult ones. 
Those who have given the 
most thought to the matter 
regard birds upon the whole 
as beneficial, and that, al¬ 
though we are obliged in 
many cases to pay a heavy 
price for their services, it is 
true economy to accept 
them. A closer observation 
of the habits of all our com¬ 
mon birds at all seasons 
while they are with us, will 
enable us to judge them 
more fairly than we are in 
the habit of doing. The only 
exact way in which to come 
at a proper estimate of the 
usefulness or otherwise of 
any species, is to kill one 
each week or two of the sea¬ 
son, and put the contents of 
its stomach into a box or 
bottle, and label it with the 
name of the bird and the’ 
date. At the end of the sea¬ 
son this collection will show 
at a glance what work 
the species has done. The 
Cedar-bird (Ampelis cedro- 
rum) is almost too well 
known to need a description. 
Our engraving gives its 
form; its length is 7£ in¬ 
ches; its plumage is of the 
most neat and silky charac¬ 
ter, and though not brilliant is called beautiful. 
■ ■ ■ - ra ^ Bf -» »- 
The Sardine Fishery. 
“ What are Sardines ? ” asks a correspondent. 
This is a question which has before now puz¬ 
zled the naturalists. 
The name was ori¬ 
ginally applied to a 
small fish taken off 
the coast of Sar¬ 
dinia, Clupeco Sardi- 
na, and is a mature 
fish, while the 
greater bulk of the 
Sardines of com¬ 
merce are caught off 
the north-west coast 
of France, and are 
the young of the 
Pilchard, another 
species of Clupea (G. 
pilchardns ), which 
when mature is 
about the size of a 
Herring. The young 
of several other kind 
of fish also find 
their way into the 
market as Sardines, 
and -when properly 
preserved are un- 
distinguishable from 
the genuine except by those wise in such 
matters. Our engraving represents a scene at 
one of the celebrated Sardine localities off the 
