THE INSECT AS MAN'S AUXILIARY.
A hunter of small birds, in an ingenious academical memoir, gives utterance to the following paradox: "Their recent multiplication is the cause of the disease in the vine and the potato."
How should this be? The disease, which first broke out in September 1845, is produced, says the author, by microscopic animalcules and parasitical vegetation previously destroyed by the insects. But these insect-protectors of agriculture perished, devoured by birds, in 1844. The fatal law passed in the May of that year, for the protection of the birds, must have multiplied them to such a degree, that the insects, driven out and destroyed by them, could no longer afford to our plants the succour which defended them against their invisible enemies.
This hypothesis, supported with much wit and ability, and apparently grounded on facts and dates, rests wholly on one basis, and if it fails, crumbles to the ground.
It supposes that the birds have been efficaciously protected by the law, and that, in twelve years, they have been so able to multiply as to become masters of the field, the tyrants and exterminators of the useful insect-species, and that, in fine, the latter have unfortunately almost disappeared.
To this three replies may be given:—
1st. The birds have not multiplied. We must not go for the truth to the Bulletin des Lois (the Statute-book), but to fowlers and bird-catchers. And they reply:—"So many birds have been destroyed since the enactment of the law for their benefit, that in certain countries sport has actually become impossible, because there are no more to kill."
In Provence, in the very localities where the gnats are insupportable (and the birds, therefore, most precious),—in the Camargue,—the sportsmen, in default of edible birds, now kill the swallows. They place themselves on the watch at the points where the winged legions pass in files, and slaughter several victims at one discharge.