THE TEMPLES OF THE HILLS 271 



It is sad to reflect that the few clumps which form 

 bird refuges such as the one described — small oases 

 of wild life in the midst of a district where all the 

 most interesting species are ruthlessly extirpated — 

 are never safe from the destroyer. A few years of 

 indifference or kindly toleration or love of birds on 

 the owner's or tenant's part may serve to people the 

 grove, but the shooting may be let any day to the 

 landlord or shooting-tenant of the adjoining property, 

 whereupon his gamekeeper will step in to make a 

 clean sweep of what he calls vermin. 



Last summer I visited a hill-grove which was new 

 to me, about thirteen miles distant from the one 

 where I met with owls and sparrow-hawks and other 

 persecuted species; and as it was an exceptionally 

 large grove, surrounded by a growth of furze and 

 black and white thorn, and at a good distance from 

 any house, I hoped to find it a habitation of inter- 

 esting bird life. But there was nothing to see or hear 

 excepting a pair of yellowhammers, a few greenfinches 

 and tits, with two or three other feathered mites. It 

 was a strictly protected grove, as I eventually dis- 

 covered when I came on a keeper's gibbet where the 

 pines were thickest. Here were many stoats, weasels, 

 and moles suspended to a low branch: crows and 

 rooks, a magpie, and two jays and eleven small hawks; 

 three of these were sparrow-hawks — one in full, the 

 others in immature, plumage — and eight kestrels. 



This, judging from the condition of the corpses — 

 one or two newly killed, while the oldest were dried 

 up to bones and feathers — was probably the harvest 



