THE FARMER’S HELPERS

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“By ‘helpers’ I here mean those animals and birds that come to our aid, though not subject to our care and protection, and make war on the insects and divers other devourers that would soon get complete control of our crops if we were left to our own resources for preventing their excessive multiplication. What could man do against those voracious hordes that annually propagate their kind at a rate defying calculation? Would he have the patience, the skill, the keenness of eyesight necessary for effective warfare upon the smallest of these marauders when the June-bug, despite its size, mocks at our utmost efforts to exterminate it? Would he undertake to examine all his fields, a clod at a time, to inspect his grain, ear by ear, to scrutinize his fruit trees, one leaf after another? For so prodigious a task the combined efforts of the whole human race would not suffice. The devouring hosts would eat us up, my friends, if we had no helpers to come to our rescue, helpers endowed with a patience that nothing can weary, an adroitness that baffles all wiles, a vigilance from which there is no escape. To lie in wait for the enemy, to seek him in his remotest retreats, to pursue him without pause or rest, and finally to exterminate him, that is their sole concern, their incessant preoccupation. They are implacable, pitiless; hunger urges them on, both for their ow