GOLDFINCHES 215 



stop us from catching them." I expressed the hope 

 that such a law would come in time, at which he 

 shook his head and grunted. Now Somerset has such 

 a law and I hear that goldfinches are again to be seen 

 in the Wells district. In fact, county after county- 

 has taken up the cause of this pretty and useful little 

 bird, and in a small map of the country lying before 

 me, in which the counties where the goldfinch receives 

 protection throughout the year are coloured red, I 

 find that on more than three-fourths of the entire 

 area of England and Wales the bird is now safe- 

 guarded. As a result it is increasing all over the 

 country, but it will be many years before we have it 

 in its former numbers. How abundant it was about 

 eighty years ago, before its long decline began, may 

 be gathered from the following passage in Cobbett's 

 Rural Rides describing his journey from High worth 

 to Malmesbury in Wiltshire: 



Between Somerford and Ocksey, I saw, on the side of the road, 

 more goldfinches than I had ever seen together; I think fifty- 

 times as many as I had ever seen at one time in my life. The 

 favourite food of the goldfinch is the seed of the thistle. The seed 

 is just now dead ripe. The thistles all cut and carried away from 

 the fields by the harvest; but they grow alongside the roads, 

 and in this place in great quantities. So that the goldfinches 

 were got here in flocks, and, as they continued to fly before me 

 for nearly half a mile and still sticking to the roads and brakes, 

 I do believe I had, at last, a flock of 10,000 flying before me. 



Cobbett rightly says that the seed of the thistle is 

 the favourite food of the bird; and once upon a time 

 an ornithologist made the statement that the im- 

 proved methods of agriculture in England had killed 

 the thistle, thus depriving the goldfinch of its natural 



