296 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



or farmer's journal as "even worse than the 

 rook." Even the ornithologists who are inter- 

 ested in birds as birds haven't a good word to 

 say of the daw. According to them he alone is 

 responsible for the disappearance of his dis- 

 tinguished relation, the chough. (The vulgar 

 daw is of course devoid of any distinction at all, 

 unless it be his grey pate and wicked little grey 

 eyes.) 



The ornithologists were wrong about the 

 chough, just as they had been wrong about the 

 goldfinch, during the late years of the nineteenth 

 century, and as they were wrong about the swal- 

 lows and martins in later years. Of the goldfinch, 

 they said, and solemnly put it down in their books, 

 that owing to improved methods of agriculture 

 the thistle had been extirpated and the bird, de- 

 prived of his natural food, had forsaken this 

 country. But no sooner did our County Councils 

 begin to avail themselves of the powers given 

 them by the Bird Act of twenty years ago to 

 protect the goldfinch from the bird-catcher, than 

 It began to increase again and Is still increasing, 

 year by year, all over the country. 



Of the decrease of swallows and martins, they 



