14 INTPtODUCTORY. 



Country he has practically exterminated the jay and 

 magpie. 1 The buzzard, kite, and hen-harrier have likewise 

 in many parts of these islands been driven to the verge of 

 extinction. 



But it is by cultivation and draining, the latter more 

 especially, that our smaller birds have been most power- 

 By draining ^^^^7 affected. The reclaiming of carseland 

 and cultiva- has been the death - warrant of the bittern 

 tion- and ruff, of the bearded reedling and Savi's 



warbler. The Scots cut down their great forests in olden 

 time to rid them of the wolf, and with it they lost the 

 capercaillie. One of the most remarkable and sudden of 

 recent changes in the face of a country is to be found 

 in some of the Channel Islands, where, since gin took 

 the place of cider as the national beverage, the orchards 

 have been abandoned, and the whole country is under 

 vegetables for the early London market.^ The effect of 

 such a transformation on the number of the migratory 

 species that formerly stayed to breed in those islands can 

 scarcely be overestimated. The draining of the fens, with 

 the accompanying cutting down of the dense reeds that 

 had for all time afforded shelter and nesting-sites to many 

 fen-birds, has perhaps been the most important factor 

 of all. The actual spread of bricks and mortar, though 

 doubtless a condition to be reckoned with, is not of such 

 paramount importance as might at first sight appear. In 

 the first place, there must always be very large tracts which, 

 1 r cr ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^ suppose, will not, for a very long 

 time at any rate, be built over. Marvellously 

 as the population of these islands has increased during 

 the past century, having already passed that of France, 

 a country of considerably more than half again the area, it 

 is to be remarked that the tendency has been to crowd 

 more closely into those centres of i3opulation which were 

 cities and towns at the beginning of the century, in many 



1 Muirhcad, Birds of Berwickshire, pp. 200, 202. 



2 Smith, Birds of Guernsey, vol. viii. 



