The Scottish Naturalist. 293 



they can become in any degree a burden to themselves or a 

 nuisance to other creatures." 



Let our rapacious birds live, and the mortality among grouse 

 and partridges will to a considerable extent cease. It appears 

 as something remarkable, the trouble and expense people 

 put themselves to, to provide artificial means for keeping the 

 destroyers of their crops within proper limits. As instances 

 of what I refer to, I may mention the Associations formed (in 

 various parts of the country) for the destruction of wood-pigeons, 

 the number of people employed in killing moles, and the many 

 devices resorted to by gardeners and fanners to protect their 

 fruit and seed crops. If hawks and owls were allowed to live, 

 gardeners would be saved much of the trouble they now have in 

 protecting their fruit from blackbirds, thrushes, and other small 

 birds, nor would they have (as is often the case) their newly 

 sown pease devoured by mice. Farmers would not have half 

 the mice in their stack-yards, nor moles and mice in their fields, 

 and landed proprietors would not have the mortification of see- 

 ing (as they frequently do) what was but a short time ago a 

 thriving plantation, now nothing but a lot of dead scrub, and 

 this by an enemy which it is beyond their power to reach, viz., 

 field mice. Let our beautiful owls live, and while owners of 

 plantations are comfortable in bed, these night-birds will range 

 their woods and copses, devouring the destructive little rodents 

 by the dozen, keeping them in check in a far more effectual 

 way than is to the owners possible, supposing they spend thou- 

 sands of pounds in the attempt, and this too without costing 

 them one halfpenny. It is a true saying, " Give a dog a bad 

 name, and you may hang him ; " and thus it is with our hawks 

 and owls, although no one who has studied their habits and 

 mode of living can honestly lay anything to their charge ; yet 

 the hand of every person who knows them not is raised against 

 them: strange is it not that blind prejudice would keep men so 

 long from seeing their own true interest ! Even so far back as 

 1769, Pennant, in speaking of the Short-eared Owl, says, " The 

 farmers about Washenbrough are fond of the arrival of these 

 birds, as they clear the fields of mice, and will even fly in search 

 of prey during the day, provided the weather is cloudy and 

 misty." It is evident that even at this time the good sense of 

 those farmers has not extended beyond their own neighbourhood, 

 for I have known instances where over a dozen moles have been 

 got in the nest of a sparrow-hawk by those who had killed the 



