should not an enormous saving be effected in the sum of 5,000,000l., which represents the annual expenditure of the population of England and Wales alone, upon funerals and graves, by entrusting the commercial management of the matter to public companies? The money wasted upon the very mockery and beadledom of grief, might, with far greater propriety, be devoted to the comfort of the living. In very truth nothing more horrible—nothing more disgusting to the true mourner could be conceived than the mourning-coach, and the weepers, and the long cloaks, and the black horses, and the sottish misery of the professional mutes, except it were the consciousness that, when all was done, the remains of some beloved parent or child were consigned to a mere dirty hole in a reeking London churchyard there to await—and at no distant period—insult and desecration?
One word more upon the subject of expense of funerals, as far as the middle classes of society are concerned. Whereas, under the old system of undertaker’s grief, the cost of a funeral varied from 100l. to 50l.; under the present arrangements the body of a deceased person may be committed to the grave for about 20l. with every circumstance of reverence and respect.
The practice of inhumation—when the grave is on the hill-side or in a meadow surrounded with trees and flowers—appears to be the one most in accordance with the feelings of the Christian world. In former days the opinion of the Pagans was different, and is quaintly set forth by old Sir Thomas Brown, in his “Treatise upon Urn Burial:” “Some being of the opinion of Thales that water was the original of all things, thought it most equal to submit unto the principle of putrefication, and conclude in a moist relentment;—others conceived it most natural to end in fire, as due unto the master-principle in the composition, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus; and therefore heaped up large piles more actively to waft them towards that Element, whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into worms, and left a lasting parcel of their composition.” Let this be as it may have been in former days, the Christian Englishman rather desires a quiet resting-place—under the pure sky, in some country spot—for those whom he has loved during life, and whom he hopes to rejoin hereafter.
BIRDS AND INSECTS.
At the late agricultural meeting at St. Gallen, in Switzerland, Baron von Tschudi, the celebrated Swiss naturalist, dwelt on the important services of birds in the destruction of insects. Without birds, said he, no agriculture and vegetation are possible. They accomplish in a few months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage therefore blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and destroying birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending, on the contrary, the process of alluring birds into gardens and cornfields.
Among the most deserving birds he counts swallows, finches, titmice, redtails, &c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours three tall rose-trees had suddenly been covered with about 2000 tree-lice. At his recommendation a marsh-titmouse was located in the garden, which in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly clean. A redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an hour. A couple of night-swallows have been known to destroy a whole swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of golden-crested wrens carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods, titmice are of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently lays from 600 to 800 eggs, twice in the summer season, while a titmouse with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens, nuthatches, and woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings. In 1848 an immense swarm of caterpillars, of the well-known genus Bombax dispar, had destroyed all the tree leaves in the orchard of Count Casimus Wadzibi, who observed the stems and branches coated as it were with a heavy crust of millions of eggs surrounded by a hairy skin. He employed scores of hands to scrape them off, but to no avail, and the trees were about to decay. Lucidly, towards the winter, numerous flights of titmice and wrens frequented that part, and it was soon perceived that the nests of the caterpillars were visibly diminishing. In the spring time about twenty pairs of titmice made their nests in the garden, and in the course of the summer they had cleared the trees of all the caterpillars.
M. Tschudi considers sparrows to be very useful birds, as one single pair usually carry to their nest every day about 300 caterpillars, an advantage that amply compensates for the cherries the birds steal in the garden. Owls also consume, morning and evening, vast numbers of wood insects. Some species of birds, such as starlings, jackdaws, rooks, jays, and speckled magpies, are distinguished for destroying maybugs or cockchafers. White of Selborne, who devoted some time to the observation of the movements of a pair of common barn owls, found, among other things, that they often carried to their nest a mouse every five minutes; while another pair of great owls had carried to their nest in one evening in June no less than eleven mice. Most of the smaller birds feed either entirely or partially, especially during the hatching season, on insects, worms, snails, spiders, &c.; so do also hedge-sparrows, woodpeckers, thrushes, fly-catchers {Muscicapas), wagtails, larks, &c.
Without these useful birds obnoxious insect would increase in such masses as to become a permanent plague in Europe, and destroy all fruit and vegetation, like the locusts in the East; and the farmer, in balancing the gain and loss accruing from these useful birds, ought to consider the latter in the light of domestic servants whose cost of keeping is amply repaid by their services.
