THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 15 
ERIOUS consideration of the economic value of birds is a com- 
S paratively recent phase of agricultural research. It is therefor of 
great interest to friends of the birds, to learn of a scholarly disser- 
tation on this important subject, in an Old Volume published in London 
in 1726, 
This quaint book, printed 43 years before the United States Declara- 
tion of Independence, and 41 years after the establishment by William 
Penn of a colony at Philadelphia, contains much information that is 
now common knowledge, and also many statements that have long 
since been discounted as being of no value. 
Added to the interest of the conclusions, is the peculiar use of 
capitals, punctuation, and occasional old style spelling. 
A GENERAL 
TE a ys les I Nd 
of 
GARDENING AND HUSBANDRY 
Containing a New 
SYSTEM OF VEGETATION 
Illustrated with many 
OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS 
The Author: R. Braptey, Professor of Botany in the University of 
Cambridge and F.R.S. 
But I shall take this Opportunity before I leave the Subject of the destroy- 
ing of Insects, to introduce a very curious Letter I have lately recetv'd, which has 
already met with the Approbation of so many ingenious Gentlemen that I have 
shown it to, that I am pursuaded, my Readers would lose a considerable Entertain- 
ment, if I was not to make it publick. 
To Dr. Bradley, F.R.S. 
STR, 
REading lately Mr. Mortimer’s Treatise of Husbandry, I took Notice of 
his remarkable Prejudice against the wing’d Species, insomuch as to wishfor a Law 
for extirpating several Tribes of them. I shall in this beg Leave to be an Advocate of 
these Innocents who cannot speak for themselves; and endeavor to shew, that the 
Services they do us, abundantly balance the Inconveniences, and instead of being 
Nusances they are Blessings, and that without them, we should be like the Land of 
Egypt under the Curse, that the Grashoppers would come, and Caterpillars in- 
numerable, and would cut up all the Grass in our Land, and devour the Fruit of our 
Ground, and multiply so exceedingly, as to creep into our Kings Palaces; and 
Flies would so abound, as to be extreamly incommodtius to us. 
