hown to be much given to eating
caterpillars, and, unlike most birds, does not reject those that are
covered with hair. In fact, cuckoos eat so many hairy caterpillars
that the hairs pierce the inner lining of their stomach and remain
there, so that when the stomach is opened and turned inside out, it
appears to be lined with a thin coating of hair. This bird also eats
beetles, grasshoppers, sawflies, and spiders. It turns out from the
investigations of the department that the suspicion with which all
farmers look upon woodpeckers is undeserved by that bird. These birds
rarely leave an important mark upon a healthy tree, but when a tree
is affected by wood-boring larvae the insects are accurately located,
dislodged, and devoured. In case the holes from which the borers are
taken are afterward occupied and enlarged by colonies of ants, these
ants are drawn out and eaten. Woodpeckers are great conservators of
forests, and to them more than to any other agency is due the
preservation of timber from hordes of destructive insects.

The department defends the much-abused crow and states that he is not
by any means the enemy of the farmer, in which role he is generally
represented. The pamphlet shows that he is known to eat frogs, toads,
salamanders, and some small snakes, and that he devours May beetles,
June bugs, grasshoppers, and a large variety of other destructive
insects. It is admitted that he does some damage to sprouting corn,
but this can be prevented by tarring the seed, which not only saves
the corn, but forces the crow to turn his attention to insects.

_Insects injurious to vegetation._--Essays may be written describing
some of the insects injurious to fruit trees; also the birds that feed
largely upon these insects--the warblers, thrushes, orioles, wrens,
woodpeckers, vireos, and others. Tell, if possible, from your own
observation, of their curious, but effective, ways of finding their
food. Describe how the birds inspect the trees, limb by limb and bud
by bud, in their eager search for the eggs, larvae, and mature forms of
insects. Note, especially, the oriole as he runs spirally round a
branch to the very tip, then back to the trunk, treating branch after
branch in the same way, till the whole tree has been thoroughly
searched, almost every bud having been in the focus of those bright
eyes. It is hard to describe which is the more beautiful--their
brilliant, flaming colors or their bugle-like bursts of musi