7 
his egg-stealing proclivities are the result of an undue increase in 
the numbers of the species, and consequent difficulty in obtaining 
a sufficient food supply, 
I do not propose to adduce any evidence with regard to birds 
which do not suffer much from persecution in our country and are 
admittedly useful, such as the whole Swallow tribe, the Flycatchers, 
the Swifts, the Leaf Warblers, &c. As a rale no keeper or gardener 
is likely to waste a cartridge on them, so that no defence is needed. 
There is, however, one of our most useful birds which suffers much 
from that instrument of torture, the pole trap, especially on the 
moors, viz., the Cuckoo. Eckstein (“ Aus dem Walde,” p. 338) gives 
the contents of the stomachs of 34 of these birds, from which it 
appears that larvae and imagines of insects, most of which are 
directly or indirectly harmful, form practically their whole food. 
For instance, one stomach contained 30 Pieris brassicse (the large 
garden white or cabbage butterfly). Cockchafers occurred in nine 
cases, and traces of the hairy caterpillars, which are rejected by 
so many of our insect-feeding birds, were common, Norgate gives 
instances where destructive visitations of Bornbyx pini and Liparis 
chrysorrhea have been checked by these birds. 
With regard to the Tits, there is some difference of opinion. 
Some observers (Mr, W. B. Tegetmeier among others) maintain 
that the damage done in the spring among the buds, and in the 
autumn to the pears, renders them undesirable inhabitants of a 
fruit garden, Norgate estimates the number of young in the case 
of a Blue Tit at nine to fourteen, and states that they are fed about 
300 times a day. As there is no doubt that at such times the food 
is entirely insectivorous, this seems to leave the balance strongly in 
favour of the birds, but further investigation is certainly desirable. 
The Bullfinch is also accused of doing much harm to the buds of 
fruit trees, but it is quite possible that the buds are destroyed 
in the search for those infested by insects,* and microscopic exami¬ 
nation of the contents of the stomachs of birds killed in early spring 
ought to definitely settle the point. 
To show that even a bird popularly credited with mischievous 
habits (and not without reason) is capable of doing much useful 
work, I may mention the case of a half-tamed jackdaw formerly in my 
own possession. I have repeatedly seen this bird carefully exploring 
the soil around the plantains on a lawn and extracting one after 
another some twelve or fourteen of the “ leather-jacket ” grubs, the 
destructive larval form of a Tipula, Even the parasitic Sparrow, 
* Such as the Winter Moth (Cheimatohia brumata , L.). See Newman’s 
“ Brit. Moths,” p. 106, for an account of the destruction caused by this insect. 
