It takes mankind a great while to learn the ways of Providence, and to understand that things are better contrived for him than he can contrive them for himself. Of late, the people are beginning to learn that they have mistaken the character of most of the little birds, and have not understood the object of the Almighty in creating them. They are the friends of those who plant, and sow, and reap. It has been seen that they live mostly on insects, which are among the worst enemies of the agriculturist; and that if they take now and then a grain of wheat, a grape, a cherry, or a strawberry, they levy but a small tax for the immense services rendered. In this altered state of things, legislatures are passing laws for the protection of little birds, and increasing the penalties to be enforced upon the bird-killers.
A farmer in my neighborhood came one day to borrow a gun for the purpose of killing some yellow-birds in his field of wheat, which he said were eating up the grain. I declined to loan the gun. In order, however, to gratify his curiosity, I shot one of them, opened its crop, and found in it two hundred weevils, and but four grains of wheat, and in these four grains the weevil had burrowed! This was a most instructive lesson, and worth the life of the poor bird, valuable as it was. This bird resembles the canary, and sings finely. One fact like this affords an eloquent text for sermonizing, for the benefit of the farmers and others who may look upon little birds as inimical to their interests. Every hunter and farmer ought to know that there is hardly a bird that flies that is not a friend of the farmer and gardener.
Some genial spirits have given the most elaborate attention to the question of the value of birds. One gentleman took his position some fifteen feet from the nest of an oriole, in the top of a peach-tree, to observe his habits. The nest contained four young ones, well fledged, which every now and then would stand upon the edge of the nest to try their wings. They were, therefore, at an age which required the largest supply of food. This the parents furnished at intervals of two to six minutes, throughout the day. They lighted on the trees, the vines, the grass, and other shrubbery, clinging at times to the most extreme and delicate points of the leaves, in search of insects. Nothing seemed to come amiss to these sharp-eyed foragers--grasshoppers, caterpillars, worms, and the smaller flies. Sometimes one, and sometimes as many as six, were plainly fed to the young ones at once. They would also carry away the refuse litter from the nest, and drop it many yards off. A little figuring gives the result of this incessant warfare against the insects. For only eight working hours it will be 1000 worms destroyed by a single pair of birds. But if a hundred pairs be domesticated on the premises, the destruction will amount to 100,000 daily, or 3,000,000 a month!