their usefulness, are indeed the most ignorant of them. They attribute to them a full moiety of the injury occasioned by insects; yet there is not an insect in existence which is not the natural food of certain birds, and which would multiply to infinity if not kept in check by them.

Men are willing and eager to keep dogs and cats, to feed and protect them, and endure their annoyances, because they understand that their services in a variety of ways, both in the house and out of doors, are sufficient to compensate for all their mischief and their trouble. They can appreciate their value, and are willing to overlook their offences. But the birds, who sing and make themselves agreeable in thousands of ways, men will destroy, because they are either too ignorant or too stupid to understand the benefits they derive from them. Probably the cats and dogs in this country cost in the aggregate a million of dollars in feeding them, to say nothing of their troublesomeness, to one hundred dollars which the whole feathered tribe costs us by the fruit and grain they damage and consume.

Calculations have been frequently made to ascertain the probable amount of insects consumed by any single bird. Many of these accounts are almost incredible, yet the most of them will admit of demonstration. Two different methods have been adopted for ascertaining these facts. The investigators watch the birds, to learn their food by their habits of feeding or foraging; or they destroy single birds at different times and seasons and examine the contents of their crop. Mr. Bradley, an English writer, mentions a person who was led by curiosity to watch a pair of birds that were raising a young brood, for one hour. They went and returned continually, bringing every time a caterpillar to the nest. He counted the journeys they made, and calculated that one brood did not

consume less than five hundred caterpillars in the course of the day. The quantity destroyed in thirty days, at this rate, by one nest would amount to fifteen thousand. Suppose every square league of territory contained one hundred nests of this species, there would be destroyed by them alone in this space a million and a half of caterpillars in the course of one month.

I was sitting at a window one day in May, when my sister called my attention to a Golden Robin in a blackcherry tree employed in destroying the common hairy caterpillars that infest our orchards, and we counted the number he killed while he remained on the branch. During the space of one minute, by a watch, he destroyed seventeen caterpillars. I observed that he did not swallow the whole insect. After seizing it in his bill, he set his foot upon it, tore it asunder, and swallowed an atom taken from the inside. Had he eaten the whole caterpillar, three or four would probably have satisfied his appetite. But the general practice of birds that devour hairy caterpillars is to eat only a favorite morsel. Hence, they require a greater number to satisfy their wants.

This fact led me to consider how vast an amount of benefit this single species must contribute to vegetation. Suppose each bird to pass twelve out of the twenty-four hours in seeking his food, and that one hour of this time is employed in destroying caterpillars. At the rate of seventeen per minute, each bird would destroy a little more than one thousand caterpillars daily while they were to be found. Yet, if the crop of the bird were dissected, it would not be possible to discover from these titbits the character of the insect which he had devoured. So I draw the inference that while we may discover many important facts by dissection, all are not revealed to us by this mode of examination. Imagine, however, from the facts which I have recounted, the vast increase of cater

pillars that would follow the extinction of this single species.

It is recorded in "Anderson's Recreations," that a curious observer, having discovered a nest of five young jays, remarked that each of these birds, while yet very young, consumed daily at least fifteen full-sized grubs of the Maybeetle, and would require many more of a smaller size. The writer conjectures that of large and small each bird would require about twenty for its daily supply. At this rate the five birds would consume one hundred. Allowing that each of the parents would require fifty, the family would consume two hundred every day, and the whole amount in three months would be about twenty thousand. This seems to me from my own experience a very moderate calculation.

In obedience to an almost universal instinct, the granivorous birds, except those that lead their brood around with them like the hen, feed their young entirely upon the larva of insects. The finches and sparrows are therefore insectivorous, with but a few exceptions, the first two or three months of their existence. They do not consume grain or seeds until they are able to provide for themselves. The old birds supply their young with larva, when this kind of food is abundant, and when the tender state of their digestive organs requires the use of soft food. According to Mr. Augustus Fowler, who is good authority for any original observations, the American Goldfinch waits, before it builds a nest, until it is so late that the young, when they appear, may be fed with the milky grains and seeds of plants. It should be added that doves and pigeons soften the grain in their own crop before they give it to their young.

The quantity of insects consumed by the feathered race is infinite or beyond all calculation. The facts related of them show that birds require a larger quantity

of food according to their size than quadrupeds. My own experience corroborates the accounts which I have selected from the testimony of other observers. I took from the nest two young bluebirds, which are only half the size of a jay, and fed them with my own hands for the space of two weeks. These little birds would each swallow twelve or more large muck-worms daily, or other grubs and worms in the same proportion. Still they always seemed eager for more, and were not overfed. I made a similar experiment with two young catbirds, which were attended with results still more surprising. Their voracity convinced me that the usual calculations bearing upon this subject are not exaggerated.

WHY BIRDS SING IN THE NIGHT.

IN connection with this theme, we cannot escape a feeling of regret, almost like sorrow, when we reflect that the true nightingale and the skylark the classical birds. of European literature - are strangers to our fields and woods. In May and June there is no want of sylvan minstrels to wake the morn and to sing the vespers of a quiet evening. A flood of song awakens us at the earliest. daylight; and the shy and solitary veery, after the vesper bird has concluded his evening hymn, pours his few pensive notes into the very bosom of twilight, and makes the hour sacred by his melody. But after twilight is sped and the moon rises to shed her meek radiance over the sleeping earth, the nightingale is not here to greet her rising, and to turn her melancholy beams into brightness and gladness. When the queen moon is on her throne, "clustered around by all her starry Fays," the whippoorwill alone brings her the tribute of his monotonous song, and soothes the dull ear of night with sounds which, however delightful, are not of heaven.

We have become so familiar with the lark and the nightingale by perusing the romance of rural life, that "neither breath of Morn when she ascends" without this the charm of her earliest harbinger, nor "silent Night" without her "solemn bird," seems holy as when we read. of them in pastoral song. Poetry has hallowed to our minds the pleasing objects of the Old World. Those of the New must be cherished in song many more years before they can be equally sacred to the imagination.