Mr. tucker - In several notices which I have seen of my article on "Birds, Insects, and other matters," published in the July number of the Horticulturist, I observe that the writers have, as with one accord, made such haste to pick me up, that they could not possibly wait until I was fairly down. Aiming always to express my opinions in terms that will not admit of misunderstanding, I was a little piqued at my failure to do so in this instance. On recurring to the article, however, I can find no cause for self-reproach on this score; and I must set down the coincidence of error on the part of my critics, as a kind of unaccountable epidemic.

In speaking of the utility of birds, what I said was, "It is a common belief that they are great benefactors of man in the destruction of pestiferous insects." To this belief I avowed my infidelity, basing it upon the fact that, after close observation for many years, I had never seen any of the birds with which we are most familiar, prey upon any of several species of insects which I enumerated as particularly pernicious or " pestiferous," comprising a greater part of those whose destructiveness is most frequent and annoying about our gardens and orchards. What I seem perversely to be understood to say is, that birds do not destroy insects at all ; and then this proposition is combatted by each after his own manner. The Maine Farmer kindly volunteered an essay upon ornithq|pgy, to prove for my enlightenment that' insects' do form a considerable article of diet for the birds, and gave me particular instructions how to proceed to ascertain the fact, closing with a recommendation that I turn my attention for a while to a course of study in that direction.

Though the study would unquestionably prove both agreeable and instructive, yet I accept as a ' finality,' the knowledge which the science has been compelled to yield to that writer's exemplary diligence and perseverance, and which he has been so generous as to impart, and submissively admit the fact he so confidently claims. I am the more readily persuaded, perhaps, to make this concession, as I many years since came to the same conclusion, from observation as a mere outsider. I believe I provided against such exceptional cases as he mentions, of the caterpillar being occasionally eaten by the oriole, and the cut worm by the robin, in the admission that a thousand such instances might possibly be proved, yet with little avail, notwithstanding. Such instances in case* of the robin, are evidently mistakes, growing out of the eagerness of his pursuit of angle worms, for which he would not like to be held responsible, were they criminal, and he would honorably waive the credit of them, as they are not. About the time the article in question was written, our orchards here abounded with caterpillars beyond all precedent. There was not an apple tree which was not overrun by them. Now it so happened that on one was the nest of an oriole, and on another that of a robin.

As I had never seen a bird of any description assail this pest, these circumstances gave me an opportunity, which I felt interest enough to improve, to watch their demonstrations upon it. Though this observation extended through a period of two or three weeks, including the time of rearing their young, yet I never, in a single instance, saw a caterpillar molested by either of them. The robin manifested peculiar forbearance, for while the worms lay in plasters on the limbs leading from her nest, and were often seen even crawling over the nest itself, she sat upon it in perfect composure, and apparently unconscious of their presence. Such observations frequently made, confirmed my disbelief as to their being great benefactors in the destruction, at least, of this ' pestiferous insect.'

" A Lady Subscriber at the West," also, with the same obliquity of understanding which others who have favored me with their strictures have manifested, is roused to inexpressible anger against me, and rates me soundly for something I did not say. Why, sir, in her delusion, she even threatens to take violent liberties with my hair! Prenez garde, Madame! that's a hyper-hazardous experiment, and might provoke a retort involving a trial of the christian virtue, to turn the other cheek also. I surely was not contending that the boys did not outrage the sensibilities of sympathetic ladies, now and then, by destroying their pet birds, nor extenuating their transgression if they did, but was claiming that their destructiveness in this way was altogether too insignificant to cause any material decrease of insects. My own sympathies were distinctively manifested in denouncing woe against them, should I catch them trespassing upon the birds within my territory. I see no cause of quarrel, therefore, between the " Lady Subscriber at the West," and myself.

The very accomplished and agreeable monthly contributor to the pages of the Horticulturist, Jeffreys, betrays the same inevitable proclivity to misconception. He assures me, in the September number, with the most charming earnestness, that birds " do catch worms - caterpillars even - and bugs, and spiders." My dear sir, my language was - not that they do not catch a thousand harmless insects of one kind and another, nor that they do not even occasionally, possibly, pick up one of the most " pestiferous" - but that they are not " great benefactors" in that way. And here I not only reiterate my former declaration of infidelity, but I add to its enormity by avowing my unalterable conviction that the birds are practically guardians, protectors, preservers of the whole generation of insect plagues. You, sir, have given, quite unconsciously, one of my chiefest reasons for this belief, in enumerating among the insects which they destroy, that one, entirely inoffensive to man, yet resolute, untiring, and insatiable in his destructive pursuit of other insects, the spider.

In view of the almost unanimous avidity with which this universal benefactor is preyed upon by birds, and most especially by that incarnation of impudence and voracity, the cedar bird, who, after fulfilling his contract to strip clean our cherry trees, falls furiously upon the spiders, as though he was under bonds to clear creation of their presence before sun-down; in view of this avidity, if I could be provoked to raise my gun against them at all, it would be, not for their depredations upon my cherries, but that they devour my spiders. Look at their number and variety - pervading all nature, and continually on the alert! Not an incipient curculio, passing from the fruit he has destroyed, who has not to run the gauntlet of a dozen watchful dragons before he can find refuge in the earth. The winged insects, quiet and concealed by day, and thus secure from the attack of birds, are caught at night by thousands, in toils which everywhere beset them while flitting from place to place, disseminating new colonies of their race. Gnats, flies, bugs, worms, millers, grasshoppers, snakes! all fall victims to the ingenious entanglements, the wily stratagems, the secret ambuscades, or the open assaults of this their universal and untiring enemy.

What part they performed in preserving for our use the crops of the earth, and what proportion of them in comparison with other insects, are destroyed by the undistinguishing slaughter of the feathered race, it well behooves the inconsiderate adulators of the latter to inquire, before yielding to them the unqualified merit, so injust, so indiscriminate, and yet so fashionable, and so cheaply rendered, of being, if not the only, at least the unequalled benefactors of mankind. J. G. H.

Syncusa. Sept., 1858.