containing live hundred and four seeds, only two
hundred and ninety-six seeds were good; the
rest were consumed or damaged by insects. A
crop of colza which produced only one hundred
and eighty pounds' worth of oil, ought to have
given two hundred and eighty-eight pounds'
worth, and would have done so, if your petitioners
had been allowed fair play. In Germany,
the nun moth (phalæna monacha) has caused
whole forests to perish. Three years ago, in
Easter Prussia, more than twenty-four millions
of cubic metres of fir-wood were obliged to be
felled, solely because the trees were dying from
the attacks of insects.

"Considerable as are these losses, you will be
surprised, Messieurs les Sénateurs, that they are
not greater, when you consider the portentous
fecundity with which these adversaries are
endowed; and if Divine Providence had not raised
up, in us your petitioners, a preventive check
worthy of His wisdom, long ago would all
vegetation have disappeared from the surface of the
earth. Man, in fact, is powerless to combat
with enemies like these. His genius is able to
measure the course of the stars, to perforate
mountains, to make a ship pursue her way in
teeth of the tempest; the beasts of the
forest retreat before his advancing steps; but,
in the presence of the myriads of insects who
fall upon his cultivated fields and render all his
labours vain, his strength is only weakness. His
eye is too feeble to catch sight of more than a
few of them; his hand is too sluggish to strike
them; and besides, could he crush them by
millions, they would be reproduced by billions.
From above, from below, from the east, from
the west, their countless legions succeed each
other, in relays which know neither repose nor
armistice. In this indestructible army, which
marches to the conquest of human labour, each
regiment has its allotted month, its day, its season,
its plant, its tree. Each knows its own
post in the fray, aud never errs in taking it.
Man must have succumbed in this unequal
struggle, had not Providence given him in us—
the birds— powerful auxiliaries, faithful allies,
who marvellously well perform the task that
man is incompetent to accomplish. Yes,
Messieurs les Sénateurs, we, your petitioners, are in
reality your patrons and protectors.

"For the sake of retrieving our characters, we
have submitted to post-mortem examination;
our stomachs have been searched; and medical
will certify, not only in what proportion we
feed on insects, but what particular species we
search out and destroy, and, consequently, what
plants we preserve from their enemies.

"The three hundred and thirty species of birds
who breed in France may be divided into three
principal classes. In the first, your petitioners
will place all birds who are injurious, at
indirectly so, inasmuch as they destroy many of
us, the insectivorous birds. It includes the
diurnal birds of prey, the eagles and hawks, and
also the omnivorous birds, the crows, magpies,
and jays. But here justice compels us to make
an honourable exception in favour of the common
and the rough-legged buzzards, each individual
of whom consumes about six thousand mice per
annum. Complete absolution must be granted
to the rook, for his assistance in the destruction
of cockchafer grubs.

"In the second class, your petitioners range
what are called granivorous birds, but who, in
reality, are birds of double alimentation; for,
with the exception of the pigeon, there is no
bird which is purely granivorous; they all feed,
either at the same time, or according to the
season, both on seeds and insects. Noxious in
the first case, useful in the second, there is a
balance to be struck between the service they
render, and the evil they do. Such are sparrows
and other hard-billed birds. Frederick the
Great declared war against sparrows, because
they were just as fond as his majesty of cherries.
Of course they beat a retreat and disappeared.
But in two years, not only no cherries were to
be had, but scarcely any other fruit; the
caterpillars took the lion's share. The mighty king
was glad to sign a treaty of peace with the
birds, in which they stipulated for a moderate
share of the blackhearts and the whitehearts in
the royal gardens.

"But if sparrows, rooks, and others of their
kind, exact payment for their services, the third
class, much more numerous, give their aid
gratuitously. Such are the nocturnal birds of
prey, whom ignorance pursues as 'of evil
omen.' Better than cats, they neither steal
the milk nor lick the cream; they are the terror
of all sorts of rats and field-mice, not to mention
the multitude of night-flying insects they
destroy.

"The hedge-sparrow devours per day some
five hundred and fifty insects, amongst which
figure the kinds the most redoubtable to man.
Now, of the harm done by one of these insects
you may form, Messieurs les Sénateurs, some
idea, if you recollect that the cockchafer lays
from seventy to a hundred eggs, soon to be
transformed into so many worms, which for
three or four years live exclusively on the roots
of your most precious plants. The weevil lays
about the same number of eggs, each of which
destroys a kernel of wheat; one weevil may,
therefore, be assumed to cause the destruction
of an ear of wheat alone. The pyralus deposits
about a hundred and twenty eggs in about as
many blossom buds of the vine. From each
egg so deposited, ensues the loss of a bunch of
gapes.

"And now, Messieurs, be pleased to deign to
put these two sets of figures together. Admitting
that, out of the five hundred insects destroyed in
a day by one bird, the tenth only are noxious
creatures— say forty weevils and ten pyraluses
(which is below the truth), you have an
average of more than three thousand kernels of
wheat and eleven hundred bunches of grapes
saved in one day by one little bird. Suppose as
many natural causes as you please, to arrest
the ravages of insects; reduce the effects of the
birds' efforts as much as you like; there will
still remain sufficient grounds to justify the