1903 Correspondence 269 



Mr. Smith showed some of the dust from Mount Pelee, which fell in 

 the island of St. Lucia, presented by Mr. Chris. R. Robinson. Two 

 new members were elected. 



Just as we go to press we have received a copy of The Birds of 

 Bempton Cliffs^ by E. W. Wade, which has been reprinted in pamphlet 

 form from the Transactions of the Hull Scientific and Field Naturalists' 

 Club. It is excellently illustrated, and has evidently been produced at 

 considerable expense. We trust, therefore, that those who are interested 

 in the bird-life of the district will support the club by purchasing the 

 booklet. The cost is two shillings. Mr. Wade is to be congratulated 

 on his nineteen photographs. One of the best is that which represents 

 Mr. J. Hodgson down Raincliffe, exploring the bird-life of that pre- 

 cipitous cliff. The descriptions of the methods and dangers of these 

 climbings are of great interest. 



Correspondence. 



Rutland Birds. — " May I be allowed to criticise, in a friendly way, 

 some points in the paper on ' Rutland Birds,' by your contributor Mr. R. 

 Haines, M.B.O.U. 



" So much has been written on the vexed question of the supposed 

 present scarcity of some birds, and abundance of others, and the 

 evidence generally offered is so conflicting, if not obviously insupport- 

 able, that one wonders whatever the twenty-first-century naturalist 

 will do when he attempts to sift the fact and fiction which he will have 

 to wade through if he should endeavour to ascertain anything about the 

 bird-life of England prior to his generation. 



"Now, of all our small birds commonly supposed to be rare, or even 

 approaching extinction, none has been quoted oftener than the gold- 

 finch, the reasons offered being, firstly, the bird-catcher ; and secondly, 

 as Mr. Haines says, 'high farming and the cultivation of waste lands.' 

 If this be true, and I for one do not doubt it, and the process of exter- 

 mination has gone on for so many years, and yet this bird ' is so 

 common ' (I use Mr. Haines' own words), ' now that it is no unusual thing 

 for one small orchard of an acre or less to have one hundred young birds 

 reared in it,' the coming ornithologist will certainly wonder how many 

 goldfinches there were to the acre of orchard in the good old days. 



" Taking another of the small birds, which, as your contributor says, 

 'abound in every covert,' and whose numbers even now, in these most 

 degenerate days of ornithologists and egg-collectors, it is 'impossible 

 to estimate,' the linnet, Mr. Haines tells us, is so common in his 

 district that in the furze 'there is a nest to every three bushes.' Per- 

 sonally I have found ten other species of birds nesting in furze bushes, 

 and there arc several others that I have not found. If other birds than 

 linnets nest in the furze bushes of Rutland, and the linnets alone now 

 take one bush out of every three, how will the different species find 



