AGRICULTURAL AND HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 65 
worthless, except for fire-wood. Four and a half millions of cords of 
wood were cut from these forests; the loss caused by the depreciation 
of their value was not less than an hundred millions of thalers, or about 
eighty millions of dollars in gold. Now what is the lesson this fearful 
calamity should teach us, as well as those impoverished proprietors? 
They have, in Europe, birds which, if they had fostered, encouraged and 
protected, instead of persecuting and destroying them, would have suc- 
cessfully encountered these hosts of insects and destroyed them. Of 
these, the European jay is the most important. In size, habits and 
general character, it greatly resembles our own blue jay; in fact, 
except in their places of abode, and in some slight differences of plu- 
mage, the two birds are almost exactly the same in all respects. Both 
frequent and prefer the forests, both render invaluable services by feed- 
ing upon the eggs of caterpillars in the winter, for they are resident 
and not migratory birds, and by feeding their young with the caterpillars. 
It has been ascertained that one pair of jays will feed its young 
with half a million of caterpillars in a season, and that each bird will 
destroy, during the winter eggs that, in the following spring, would 
have hatched into at least a million more of the larve, Our 
blue jays would do the same if we would let them and not persecute 
them. ‘Their favorite food is the egg of our apple-tree or tent cater- 
pillar, and for their young the larve of this same insect is also 
their choice. A pair of blue jays in an orchard would clear it so 
effectually of every caterpillar in a single season that not one 
single insect could be found. ‘This is not mere theory, but ab- 
solute fact, demonstrated by, the careful investigation of the ven- 
erable Dr. Kirtland, of Cleveland. So completely did his care- 
fully protected jay extirpate these pests from the lake shore of 
that part of Ohio, that absolutely not a single individual specimen 
could be found for miles around Cleveland. And yet our wiseacres in 
the State Legislature of Massachusetts in this very last Session in a 
law designed to protect our birds, among its other absurdities and in- 
consistencies, especially dooms the jays, probably the best and most val- 
uable bird we have among us, to destruction, and makes it an outlaw, 
whose life any vagabond may take with impunity. There are other 
features in this law which in view of the ignorance they betray, and 
its signal shortcoming, are simply disgraceful to its authors, but which 
I will not now take your time by considering. My chief point is this, 
9 
