We do not think it wrong to have a chicken dinner, or even a quail or pigeon, if we are sick; because it takes only a bird or two to make enough. But we do think it is wrong to take many happy lives just to give one person a dinner, when he could make as good a meal on beefsteak as on a dozen little birds. Birds have so many enemies that they hardly ever die of old age. We ought to think of this, and do what we can to prolong their lives. There is hardly a spot on earth so desolate that birds are not found there. CHAPTER XI. SOME BIRDS WITH A BAD NAME. A good name is what we all want in this world. We like to have people speak well of us behind our backs. There are a few birds which have a bad name. Sometimes they deserve what is said of them, and sometimes they are quite innocent. It is always well for us to find out for ourselves if what we hear about birds is quite true. There is a king-bird or bee-martin. Farmers think him a very wicked little fellow, catching the bees on the wing and eating greedily whole swarms of them. Mr. Farmer has not yet found out everything about the bee-martin, or he would know that he eats a good many enemies of the bees, even if he does swallow a few of the bees themselves. [Illustration: King-Bird.] We once saw these birds around our beehive and felt certain that they were eating the bees. They would dart close to the hives, snapping their bills and looking very savage. But we were willing to watch a long while, that we might be certain if we were not mistaken, and we did just right. There was some tall grass near the hives, and we noticed swarms of strange looking black-and-blue flies all over the grass. We saw these flies dart out to the front of the hive and kill the bees faster than the birds could have done it. Waiting a little longer, we found that the birds were on the watch for these flies, and it was these they were catching instead of the bees at that particular time. A certain naturalist, who has spent a good deal of time trying to find out if the bee-birds do really kill bees, has told us a little secret, which is very interesting and may lead some other people to investigate the matter. He says that he has never found a worker-bee in the stomach of a bee-bird, though he has examined a great many of them. He has found only drones, which the worker bees are very glad to get rid of and often kill, because they are lazy and eat honey without gathering any for winter. Perhaps one reason why the bee-bird prefers the drone to the worker is because the drones have no stings. By all this you see that it pays us to take some trouble to find out all the good there is about anybody.