elves in the buds or foliage.
Let his flexile perch sway in the wind as it will, he is safe, for if
the twig should break or his hold should slip, which seldom occurs, he
can recover himself at once by spreading his nimble wings, wheeling
about, and alighting on a perch below. Ah, yes! the tomtit is the
embodiment and poetry of nimbleness.

But he is more than a mere feathered gentleman; he is an extremely
useful citizen. Prof. E. D. Sanderson published a valuable article in
"The Auk" for April 1898, in which he proved that this bird serves a
most useful purpose as an insecticide. He examined the craws of
twenty-eight chickadees, nineteen of them secured in the winter and
nine in the spring. During the winter 70.7 per cent of the food found
in these stomachs was animal, while in the spring no vegetable matter
was found at all, the birds subsisting entirely on insects and their
eggs and larvae. By far the larger part of the insects thus destroyed
were of the noxious species that bore into the bark and wood of the
trees or sting the fruit. An orchard in which several chickadees had
taken up their abode one winter and spring was so well cleared of
canker worms that an excellent yield of fruit was grown, whereas the
trees of other orchards in the neighborhood were largely defoliated by
the destructive worms, and there was no yield of fruit.

Professor Sanderson made an interesting estimate of the economic value
of our little scavengers. In the state of Michigan, where his
observations were made, he thinks that a fair average is seven
chickadees to the square mile. If each bird should destroy fifty-five
insects per day, which is a very modest estimate, the seven birds would
consume three hundred and eighty-five every day, making about 137,500
per year in each square mile. In this way about eight billions of
insects would be destroyed annually in the state--an economic fact
whose importance cannot be overestimated.

The same investigator also thinks that it would be wise for farmers and
fruit-growers to encourage the chickadees to make their homes in
orchards, and this could be done, he says, "by placing food for them
till they feel at home, by erecting suitable nesting sites, and by
careful protection"; to which I would add, by leaving a few old snags
in the trees where the birds can find natural nesting places. Besides
the useful purpose the birds would serve, what pleasant companions they
would be, piping, bot