J oe 
62 TRANSACTIONS OF THE HINGHAM 
encouragement of government, the most thorough investigations and 
careful aggregation of facts bearing upon the value of birds have been 
made with results so complete in many instances as to amount almost 
to a thorough demonstration. But in this country it is not so. We 
cannot give you facts, except in broken series. The facts we can sup- 
ply are valuable, instructive, suggestive. They point strongly to cer- 
tain conclusions, but they are isolated, incomplete and are not exhaus- 
tive. They. may warrant us to form opinions, and those opinions may 
be well or ill formed, according to our more or less favorable opportuni- 
ties for forming them, but for the present they must be only opinions, 
and not positive knowledge. 
I frankly state to you, thus in advance, the unsatisfactory nature of the 
ground I am to occupy, and the difficulties of the road I propose with 
you to travel. I shall therefore not attempt, except ina very general 
way, andonly on general principles, to defend the character of our 
American birds, singly or collectively. Nor do I propose to consider, 
except in the way of example, or as an illustration, any particular 
species. 
We are all interested, whether we feel any interest or not, that is, 
all of us who have any interest in the successful tilling of the soil, in 
the investigations now being made in Europe, in reference to the rava- 
ges of insects, the means of averting them and the value of birds as 
one of the instruments for checking the frightful destruction of property 
occasioned by these pests. As the precursor, and necessary preface to 
the views I propose to submit, let me briefly narrate some of the expe- 
riences of the agriculturists on the other side of the water. They are 
important and suggestive. During the last quarter of a century, for 
some cause or causes, in France, Germany, and in many portions of 
Central Europe, there has been a constant, steady and alarming in- 
crease of insects. The ravages of the canker-worm in the orchards of 
New England, of the cotton-worm, and the army-worm at the South, 
and of the grasshoppers at the west, are but slight and unimportant 
evils in comparison with the wide-spread havoc made in Central Eu- 
rope by the cockchafer, the night butterfly and other kinds of insects. 
It would be well for us of America to study both the phenomena of 
these insect plagues, and the expedients resorted to to abate or prevent 
them. The laws of Prussia, which hold every man guilty of a misde- 
meanor and subject to heavy fines if he permit the caterpillar to re- 
