178 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



But surely there can be little doubt but that the hare was 

 mastered in the end by the fierce and hungry bird. And 

 this may account for many a hare's skull I have seen bleach- 

 ing by the waterside, its hollow sockets staring into the blue 

 with an empty melancholy-. 



A bold bird, too, is the hen-harrier; for at times in the 

 dark winter afternoons the farmer will be startled by her 

 coming round his straw or corn stack with a sharp turn, and 

 if he chance to have his gun handy he kills her. 



Formerly they bred on the marshes, but I have heard 

 of no nest being taken since one found by a fenman well 

 known to me in the year 1870. 



Both birds are to be seen even now. Only last year 

 (1891) a fenman shot a cock-bird sitting on a wall in 

 June ; but the price set upon their heads is too great, and 

 they do not remain long unshot, and are so prevented 

 from breeding. Perhaps they do not escape destruction 

 so often as the marsh-harrier and Montagu, because they 

 like the dry marshes nearer the farms and villages, and 

 are therefore more easily to be got at. Of one thing 

 I am certain, however ; were no birds allowed to be shot 

 in the spring and summer, the hen-harrier would again 

 nest amongst us. As it is, the last that I know of was 

 found some fourteen years ago, and this is what the finder 

 says : — 



"We didn't know noathin' 'bout the walue on 'em then. 

 If we shot one, we used ter send him ter market, and get 

 half-a-crown for him, same as other hawks. But I found 

 out arterwards they was worth money. 'Twas this way. 

 I and my old chap was a-mowing of rushes on a dry mash 

 agin the mill. In the course of the forenoon we heard a 

 bud shrucking over our heads. We didn't think 'bout no 

 neast, so we went on mowing, and I mowed outer it. I 

 mowed as nigh to him as the middle of the next swathe, 

 and there lay five eggs in a neast made of rushes and short 

 reeds all broke down like a swan's neast. So we must leave 



