GOLDFINCHES AT m'ME IXTRTNSICA 219 



noticed that a man and his wife and httle girl standing 

 at their cottage door hard by were intently and suspi- 

 ciously watching me. On coming out I went over to 

 them and asked the man how long they had had gcjld- 

 finches breeding so abundantly in their churchyard. A 

 very few years ago I had been told that the goldfmch 

 had almost ceased to exist in Dorset. He replied that 

 it was true, that goldfinches had begun to increase only 

 during the last three or four years since they had been 

 protected by law all the year round. 



He could not have given me more agreeable news. 

 I remembered with a keen sense of satisfaction that the 

 late Mr. Mansel Pleydell-Bouverie, of Whatcombe in 

 Dorset, had written to me asking my advice in drawing 

 up a new bird-protection order for the county, and that 

 in replying I had strongly urged him to secure the fullest 

 protection the law can afford to this most charming and 

 most persecuted of all small birds. 



Two or three years before that date I spent several 

 weeks in Somerset, walking a good deal, without once 

 seeing or hearing a goldfinch, yet if I had come within 

 fifty yards of a copse or orchard inhabited by a pair, 

 their sharp, unmistakable zvhit-zvhit would have adver- 

 tised their presence. At Wells I made the acquaintance 

 of a man past middle age w-ho had taken to bird-catching 

 as a boy and still followed that fascinating vocation. 

 "Have you never had goldfinches in these parts?" I 

 asked him; to which he replied that he remembered the 

 time when they were abundant, but for the last thirty 

 years or longer they had been steadily decreasing and 



