THE TEMPLES OF THE HU.LS 277 



It is sad to reflect that the few clumps which form 

 bird refuges such as the one described — small oases of 

 wild lite 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 shoot- 

 ing-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 perse- 

 cuted 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 interesting 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 featured mites. It was a strictly 

 protected grove, as I eventually discovered 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 spar- 

 row-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 



