Only a savage, or an ignorant man, can harm or wish to get rid of a bird before he has convinced himself that it is harmful. I have said already that in the abstract there are no useful and harmful birds, as such. The bird exists as a product of Nature, to fulfil, like everything else, the tasks allotted to it by Nature and in Nature, which no other creature can perform. It is man who makes the bird useful or hurtful to himself, when he tears up the turf, and sows such seed as brings rich crops which serve the bird for food; or when he plants an orchard or vineyard, where there was none before. Therefore, for the good of the birds--and also of man--we must carefully reflect what it is our duty to do and how we can best do it. The Tits, Hedge Sparrows, Flycatchers and others whose industry know no rest, do invaluable service to a sensible man; for while the most observant and diligent gardener can only destroy those caterpillars’ nests which meet his eye wholesale, these useful birds, hopping about, darting and leaping, hanging and pecking, devour all the mischievous pests, even when they are quite out of reach of man, and certainly out of his sight. These services can even be estimated to a certain extent. The tiny Wren consumes in one year more than three million insects in different forms, either as eggs, chrysalis or perfect insects, which, if they were allowed to propagate would result in countless numbers. The Blue Tit, not much larger, destroys six and a half million insects in one year. If it bring up a family of 12 to 16 young ones, it means that one family of Tits puts about twenty-four million destructive insects out of the power of doing harm. Whoever, therefore, either from cruelty or ignorance, catches or kills these useful little birds does a great injury to the common weal. [Illustration: THE RAIDING HAWK.] The insect world has great power everywhere, and where birds and other insect-eating creatures are destroyed through ignorance there follows the destruction resulting from the ascendancy of these pests which appear, not in tens of thousands, but in millions. Twenty-one years ago any person who had ventured on such an assertion would have been laughed at, but it is now a well-known fact that some of the most renowned vineyards have been entirely ruined by the Phylloxera, an insect which can scarcely be seen by the naked eye.