, which have the reputation of being no
sluggards, take good care of their diminutive milch cattle, and will
tenderly pick them up and transport them to new pastures when the old
ones fail. Late in the summer they carefully collect all the aphid
eggs that are obtainable, and taking them into their nests keep them
safe during the winter. When spring comes and the eggs hatch, the ants
gather the young plant lice and place them on plants. It may be seen,
therefore, that the Flicker {110} by digging up ants' nests and feeding
on the inhabitants has its value in an agricultural community.

_The Question of the Weed Seeds._--The work of the Chickadee, the
Nighthawk, the Cuckoo, and the Flicker is only an example of the good
being done by at least two-thirds of birds in the United States, and
most of the remainder are not without their beneficial qualities. When
the coming of winter brings a cessation of insect life, many birds turn
to the weed patches for food. Especially is this the case with the
various varieties of native Sparrows.

No one has yet determined just how many weed seeds one of these birds
will eat in a day. The number, however, must be very great. An
ornithologist, upon examining the stomach of a Tree Sparrow, found it
to contain seven hundred undigested pigeon-weed seeds, and in the same
way it was discovered that a Snow Bunting had taken one thousand seeds
of the pigweed at one meal.

[Illustration: Cuckoo, Raiding a Tent of Caterpillars]

Mr. E. H. Forbush, the well-known Massachusetts naturalist, frequently
amuses himself by {111} observing the birds near his house as they feed
on the millet seed that he provides for them. Speaking of some of the
things he saw here, he says, "A Fox Sparrow ate one hundred and three
seeds in two minutes and forty-seven seconds; another, one {112}
hundred and ten in three minutes, forty-five seconds; while still
another Song Sparrow ate one hundred and fifty-four in the same length
of time. This Sparrow had been eating for half an hour before the
count began and continued for some time after it was finished." It is
readily seen that thirty seeds a minute was below the average of these
birds; and if each bird ate at that rate for but a single hour each day
it would destroy eighteen hundred seeds a day, or twelve thousand six
hundred a week. Some day the economic ornithologists under the
leadership of Professor F. E. L. Beal, America's leading authority on
the s