Part 32 (2/2)
In the third place, when water gra.s.ses and certain weeds spring up on land, that land is usually acid, and lime will be helpful. Moreover, fields adjoining land on which cranberries, raspberries, blackberries, or gallberries are growing wild, may always be suspected of more or less sourness.
Four forms of lime are used on land. These, each called by different names, are as follows:
First, quicklime, which is also called burnt lime, caustic lime, builders' lime, rock lime, and unslaked lime.
Second, air-slaked lime, which is also known as carbonate of lime, agricultural lime, marl, and limestone.
Third, water-slaked, or hydrated, lime.
Fourth, land plaster, or gypsum. This form of lime is known to the chemists as sulphate of lime. Do not forget that this last form is never to be used on sour lands. We shall therefore not consider it further.
Air-slaked lime is simply quicklime which has taken from the air a gas called carbon dioxide. This is the same gas that you breathe out from your lungs.
Water-slaked lime is quicklime to which water has been added. In other words, both of these are merely weakened forms of quicklime. One hundred pounds of quicklime is equal in richness to 132 pounds of water-slaked lime and to 178 pounds of air-slaked lime. These figures should be remembered by a farmer when he is buying lime. If he can buy a fair grade of quicklime delivered at his railway station for $5.00 a ton, he cannot afford to pay more than $3.75 a ton for water-slaked lime, nor more than $2.75 for air-slaked lime of equal grade. Quicklime should always be slaked before it is applied to the soil.
As a rule lime should be spread broadcast and then harrowed or disked thoroughly into the soil. This is best done after the ground has been plowed. For pastures or meadows air-slaked lime is used as a top-dressing. When air-slaked lime is used it may be spread broadcast in the spring; the other forms should be applied in the fall or in the early winter.
SECTION LXVII. BIRDS
What do birds do in the world? is an important question for us to think about. First, we must gain by observation and by personal acquaintance with the living birds a knowledge of their work and their way of doing it. In getting this knowledge, let us also consider what we can do for our birds to render their work as complete and effective as possible.
Think of what the birds are doing on every farm, in every garden, and about every home in the land. Think of the millions of beautiful wings, of the graceful and attractive figures, of the cunning nests, and of the singing throats! Do you think that the whole service of the birds is to be beautiful, to sing charmingly, and to rear their little ones? By no means is this their chief service to man. Aside from these services the greatest work of birds is to destroy insects. It is one of the wise provisions of nature that many of the most brilliantly winged and most enchanting songsters are our most practical friends.
Not all birds feed on insects and animals; but even those that eat but a small amount of insect food may still destroy insects that would have damaged fruit and crops much more than the birds themselves do.
As to their food, birds are divided into three general cla.s.ses. First, those that live wholly or almost wholly on insects. These are called insectivorous birds. Chief among these are the warblers, cuckoos, swallows, martins, flycatchers, nighthawks, whippoorwills, swifts, and humming-birds. We cannot have too many of these birds. They should be encouraged and protected. They should be supplied with shelter and water.
Birds of the second cla.s.s feed by preference on fruits, nuts, and grain.
The bluebird, robin, wood thrush, mocking-bird, catbird, chickadee, cedar-bird, meadow lark, oriole, jay, crow, and woodp.e.c.k.e.r belong to this group. These birds never fail to perform a service for us by devouring many weed seeds.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 280. A KINGBIRD]
The third cla.s.s is known as the hard-billed birds. It includes those birds which live princ.i.p.ally on seeds and grain--the canary, goldfinch, sparrow, and some others.
Birds that come early, like the bluebird, robin, and redwing, are of special service in destroying insects before the insects lay their eggs for the season.
The robins on the lawn search out the caterpillars and cutworms. The chipping sparrow and the wren in the shrubbery look out for all kinds of insects. They watch over the orchard and feed freely on the enemies of the apple and other fruit trees. The trunks of these trees are often attacked by borers, which gnaw holes in the bark and wood, and often cause the death of the trees. The woodp.e.c.k.e.rs hunt for these appetizing borers and by means of their barbed tongues bring them from their hiding-places. On the outside of the bark of the trunk and branches the bark lice work. These are devoured by the nuthatches, creepers, and chickadees.
During the winter the bark is the hiding-place for hibernating insects, which, like plant lice, feed in summer on the leaves. Throughout the winter a single chickadee will destroy great numbers of the eggs of the cankerworm moth and of the plant louse. The blackbirds, meadow larks, crows, quail, and sparrows are the great protectors of the meadow and field crops. These birds feed on the army worms and cutworms that do so much injury to the young shoots; they also destroy the chinch bug and the gra.s.shopper, both of which feed on cultivated plants.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 281. A WARBLER]
A count of all the different kinds of animals shows that insects make up nine tenths of them. Hence it is easy to see that if something did not check their increase they would soon almost overrun the earth. Our forests and orchards furnish homes and breeding-places for most of these insects. Suppose the injurious insects were allowed to multiply unchecked in the forests, their numbers would so increase that they would invade our fields and create as much terror among the farmers as they did in Pharaoh's Egypt. The birds are the only direct friends man has to destroy these harmful insects. What benefactors, then, these little feathered neighbors are!
It has been estimated that a bird will devour thirty insects daily. Even in a widely extended forest region a very few birds to the acre, if they kept up this rate, would daily destroy many bushels of insects that would play havoc with the neighboring orchards and fields.
Do not imagine, however, that to destroy insects is the only use of birds. The day is far more delightful when the birds sing, and when we see them flit in and out, giving us a glimpse now and then of their pretty coats and quaint ways. By giving them a home we can surround ourselves with many birds, sweet of song and brilliant of plumage.
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