NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 



This thoughtless and foolhardy practice of killing 

 the native birds brings retribution sharp and severe 

 upon the pioneer. The swarms of insects, finding 

 the produce of the cultivated fields more succulent 

 fare than the native vegetation to which they were 

 accustomed, abandon the latter and invade the former. 

 The new diet being so abundant and nourishing, they 

 multiply with alarming rapidity. Their rapid increase 

 is powerfully favoured, and indeed made easy, owing 

 to the farmer, his sons, and employees having persecuted 

 the birds so relentlessly that the survivors had fled 

 in terror to the wilds. 



A servant is surely worthy his hire. Apparently 

 this is not so with our good and useful helpers — the 

 birds. Those which are purely insectivorous and 

 take no payment at all are killed, trapped, and their 

 homes robbed of eggs and young. The species which 

 take a little payment in the shape of corn or fruit for 

 their heavy labours on behalf of man, are hated and 

 hunted relentlessly. Man is, and always has been, 

 apt to observe superficially and arrive at erroneous 

 conclusions. 



'* You call them thieves and pillagers ; but know 

 They are the winged wardens of your farms, 

 Who from the corn-fields drive the insidious foe, 

 And from your harvests keep a hundred harms. 

 Even the blackest of them all — the crow — 



Renders good service as your man-at-arms, 

 Crushing the beetle in his coat of mail, 

 And crying havoc on the slug and snail." 



Longfellow. 



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