of Agriculture is urging strongly that farmers
in the North protect the swallows so that they may winter in the South
in large numbers to feed on the boll-weevil, which, if allowed to
flourish, will affect not only the southern planters, but every user of
cotton goods, and every one who profits in any way by the sale and
manufacture of cotton goods.

Among swallows, the beautiful and graceful purple martin is most worthy
of protection. Both North and South, the swallows are among the most
useful of all birds to the farmer and fruit grower, and should be
protected from English sparrows and encouraged in every possible way.

The seventeen species of titmice which inhabit the United States, and
many of which remain all winter, are all insect eaters to a great
extent, eating large quantities of tent-caterpillars, moths and their
eggs, weevils, including the cotton boll-weevil, plum-curculio, ants,
spiders, plant-lice, bugs and beetles. They also eat small seeds,
particularly those of the poison ivy.

The bush-tit feeds largely on insects that destroy grape-vines and on
the black olive scale. Other species eat most of the scales which infest
fruit and forest trees.

The rose-breasted grosbeak, while it eats a few green peas, is to be
classed among the wholly beneficial birds, for it is the great natural
destroyer of the Colorado potato beetle. In fact, it eats enough
potato-bugs at a single meal to pay for all the peas eaten in a whole
season. One family of grosbeaks, nesting near the field, will keep an
entire patch cleared of potato-bugs throughout the season. In some parts
of the country the grosbeak feeds largely on the plum scale, the hickory
scale, the locust and oak scales and on the tulip scale, which is very
destructive to shade trees. The black grosbeak is another variety that
deserves encouragement in every way, for it eats the chrysalis of the
codling-moth that is so serious a foe to our apple crop. It eats also
many other injurious insects, such as wire-worms, many of the most
harmful of beetles, caterpillars, and scales.

Among the most useful birds, we must mention the phoebe, which nests
near houses and lives almost entirely on harmful insects which it
catches on the wing.

Night hawks eat flying ants in great numbers, as many as eighteen
hundred having been found in a single stomach. They eat insects that fly
by night and are classed among our most useful birds.

Quails are almost unequalled as weed-