Ornithology. 49 
many of which are skirted with fringes of wild rice, and other 
rank vegetation, we should naturally expect to find the waders 
and swimmers largely represented, and so we do, especially in 
the more unsettled distric.s. But civilization, with all of its 
improvements in fire-arms, and other instruments of destruc¬ 
tion, has proved too much for them, and their numbers on the 
whole grow steadily less. Survivors of the previous years’ on¬ 
slaught, learn to give us a wide berth in their lines of migration, 
and in the selection of their breeding places. 
But of the land birds, we can speak more cheerfully. Many 
species have increased in great numbers. The conditions for 
their multiplication, and maintenance, have kept step with the 
march of improvements, and, let us add (at the peril of protest 
from the somewhat sensitive, and most assuredly interested 
agriculturist) the inexorable necessities of civilization. With 
the occupation, and cultivation of the soil, there spring up 
as if by magic, myriads of entomological forms, many of which 
are inimical to agriculture, or to our comfort. We look to the 
birds for relief, and thank heaven for the wisdom which provides 
thus beautifully, and bountifully, for the preservation of those 
balances in organic life, so interwoven into the welfare of our 
race. The Raptores, or rapacious birds, have multipled with the 
vermin and reptiles so obnoxious to our grains and our sensi¬ 
bilities, and if, perchance, our poultry has been levied upon by 
a hawk by day, or an owl by night, for a meal that the ordinary 
chase had failed to supply him, we are paying very cheaply for 
the benefits of their ordinary service, and the choice of those 
regal birds that soar over us, instead of the loathsome reptiles 
which creep at our feet. But, when we learn of the growing 
numbers of the insectivorous songsters, many of whom by their 
resplendant plumage, have been called “ the butterflies of the 
vertebrate creation,” we recognize a beneficence of design 
in their distribution, that exalts those attributes of the Creator 
which ally him so closely to our inner and higher being. Twenty- 
five years ago the Baltimore Oriole with its body of gold and 
wings of jet—the Tanager with its body of fire and wings of 
night, were solitary wanderers in this land of the Dacotahs, only 
represented by a few as the avant couriers of a coming civiliza- 
