. Better fruit. Fruit-culture. A grade for each type ofen^e BETTER FRUIT Birds—Their Practical Benefit to Horticulture Continued from page 6. saw marlins foeil their young 312 in- sects in l(i hours. Mr. Mosher made a reeord of a pair of yellow throat warb- lers eating plant lice in a birch tree at a rate of (18 n minute for 41) minutes. At this rate this one pair of birds would destroy ,000 of these insects in a week. Harvey found .lOO mosipiitoes in the stomach of a nighthawk and 00 grass- hoppers in that of another bird of the same .species. A scarlet tanager ate 35 gypsy moth caterpilla
. Better fruit. Fruit-culture. A grade for each type ofen^e BETTER FRUIT Birds—Their Practical Benefit to Horticulture Continued from page 6. saw marlins foeil their young 312 in- sects in l(i hours. Mr. Mosher made a reeord of a pair of yellow throat warb- lers eating plant lice in a birch tree at a rate of (18 n minute for 41) minutes. At this rate this one pair of birds would destroy ,000 of these insects in a week. Harvey found .lOO mosipiitoes in the stomach of a nighthawk and 00 grass- hoppers in that of another bird of the same .species. A scarlet tanager ate 35 gypsy moth caterpillars a minute for 18 minutes; a warbler ate 90 plant lice in a minute, and a pair fed at this rate for 40 minutes. .\ red-winged black- bird had 28 cutworms in its crop. Fifty- one species of birds are known to eat hairy caterpillars, and 38 species feed on plant lice. It is estimated that dur- ing the stay of the birds in New York state each season they destroy more than 3,000,000 bushels of injurious in- sects. Think of the consecpiences if the birds were all exterminated. Is it worth while to try to save our forests, our shade trees, our fruit trees'? If so, we must stop the killing of insect- eating birds. The gypsy moth, the brown-tail moth, the leopard moth, the elm tree beetle, and the tent caterpillar have killed millions of trees in the past few years, and today they are imperil- ing every tree on the continent! The only way to check the increase of these insects is to stop the killing of insect-eating birds, and then let the birds increase to their normal numbers. Careful scientists tell us that if all in- sect-eating birds were destroyed, the whole continent would within three years become absolutely uninhabitable by reason of the myriads of insects that would spring up and devour every liv- ing thing. We are face to face with this possibility. Ninety per cent of the normal bird life of this country has already been destroyed, and the other 10 per cent will go in the
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