Blackbirds. [Kalm gives a long account (pp. 248-50) of a species of blackbirds, called in Sweden “corn thieves,” and of the great depredations they commit in the American corn fields when gathered in large flocks. The laws of Pennsylvania and New Jersey offer bounties for their destruction.] In New England the people are still greater enemies to them; for Dr. Franklin told me in the spring of the year 1750, that by means of the premiums which had been paid for killing them in New England they had been so thoroughly extirpated, that they were very rarely seen, and in a few places only. But in the summer of the year 1749 an immense quantity of worms appeared on the meadows, which devoured the grass, and did great damage, so the people repented of their enmity against the corn thieves for they thought they had observed that those birds lived chiefly on such worms before the corn was ripe, and consequently exterminated them, or at least prevented their increasing too much. They seem therefore to be entitled, as it were, to some reward for their trouble. But after these enemies and destroyers of the worms (the corn thieves) were killed off, the worms were of course more at liberty to multiply, and therefore they grew so numerous that they did more mischief now than the birds did before. In the summer of 1749 the worms left so little grass in New England that the inhabitants were forced to get hay from Pennsylvania, and even from Old England....