The Blackbird is commoner in the South than the Thrush, and is as a rule more popular with the country people than the latter bird. Gardeners look upon it as a terrible thief, but the good it does in feeding on moths, beetles, other insects and larvæ, caterpillars, cockchafer grubs, quite counterbalances the harm it does in taking fruit. A well-known Zoologist says, “Short-sighted agriculturists kill the Blackbirds that, at the rate of sixty an hour, destroy their worst foes, or working as they do from early dawn to dusk six hundred in the course of a single day, which, given ten Blackbirds, raises the total of vermin put out of the way to six thousand per diem, against which a few dozens of strawberries should count as the dust in the balance. But the horticulturist sees the Blackbirds pick a raspberry now and again, and he does not see the same bird kill a dozen or two of grubs or snails for each morsel of fruit he may help himself to.” Another, a Fruit-grower, says that during one hard winter when some of his fruit trees were killed, and in some places the Thrush tribe were all but annihilated, snails were a scourge in the following summer, and gooseberry bushes were stripped by caterpillars innumerable. This is the testimony of the late Joseph Witherspoon, a well-known fruit grower. He goes on to say, “When gardens are surrounded by woods, it is only by a liberal use of nets that any reasonable portion of fruit can be saved, as swarms of Blackbirds and Thrushes will eat every fruit as it ripens. I provide nesting-places, and thus have my birds so near my caterpillars, and so far from house morsels that they eat the pest greedily; but fruit crops being thereby secured, we must next draw on our ingenuity to prevent the birds taking more than their fair tithe.” In winter Blackbirds feed principally on snails, the shells of which they break by raising them in the bill and dashing them against a hard stone, just as Thrushes do. But for these birds, we should be quite unable to save our gardens from the wholesale ravages of those enemies to plant life. The Blackbird, of course, belongs to the Thrush family, and its relatives the Fieldfare, the Redwing, and the Mistle Thrush all have the same habits of feeding. They all devour snails, slugs, worms, and insects, and in the autumn take wild berries. The Fieldfares are only with us in winter, and they seek their food over the fields and pasture lands in mild weather, and eat the berries when frost comes, and snow covers the ground. The Redwing is a delicate bird, and often comes to grief in our country during a hard winter. The Mistle Thrush is with us all the year, and its food consists, not of mistletoe as used to be supposed, but of the berries of the yew, holly, mountain ash, hawthorn, etc., worms, snails, and insects, and, it must be confessed, of a little fruit occasionally.