cted show
clearly to what an extent the balance of nature has been disturbed. Thus
the value of wheat destroyed in a single season, in one department of
the east of France, by the _cicidomigie_, has been estimated at eight
hundred thousand dollars.

The cause of this is very soon told. The French eat the birds. The
commissioners, in their report, present some curious statistics
respecting the extent to which the destruction of birds in France has of
late been carried. They state 'that there are great numbers of
professional huntsmen, who are accustomed to kill from one hundred to
two hundred birds daily; a single child has been known to come home at
night with one hundred birds' eggs; and it is also calculated and
reported that the number of birds' eggs destroyed annually in France is
between eighty millions and one hundred millions. The result is that the
small birds in that country are actually dying out; some species have
already disappeared, while others are rapidly diminishing.' These facts
contain valuable suggestions to our own countrymen. In this instance, as
in many such like, observation is a better and more profitable master
than experience.

Our farmers can increase the value of their estates, and bring pleasure
and peace to their homes, by more special attention to the outward
adornment of their dwellings; by cultivating a garden, planting orchards
of the best selected fruit, and trees for shade, shelter, and ornament,
about their farms and along the adjoining highway. He who plants a tree,
thereby gives hostages to life, but he who cuts one down needlessly, is
a Vandal, and deserves the execration of every honest man for all time.
Learn not to value the bearded elm, 'the murmuring pines and the
hemlocks,' the stalwart oak, or the beautiful maple, by cubic measure,
but by the 'height of the great argument' they force upon us by their
presence, their beauty, and their power. Plant for to-day, and for your
children; plant 'for another age,' and thereby do 'a good office' to the
coming generations of men. No man but is better for living in the
presence of great trees. In one of those most delightful volumes of the
_Spectator_, we find a paper, written by the pure and noble Joseph
Addison, in which are well told the pleasures and profits of planting:
'It must,' he says, 'be confessed that this is none of those turbulent
pleasures which are apt to gratify a man in the heats of youth; but if
it be not so tumult