INTRODUCTION. xix 



and flora of birds' feet/ showing that numerous seeds of 

 plants and germs of animals are carried from watershed to 

 watershed in the balls of mud attached to the feet 

 of aquatic birds. From one clodlet on one bird's foot 

 no fewer than eighty seeds germinated. Cases like this 

 make us feel that a bird cannot fall to the ground with- 

 out sending a throb through a wide circle. The economic 

 importance of birds — especially in connection with agri- 

 culture, fruit-growing, and gardening — is a subject urgently 

 requiring further study, which a British Association 

 committee has been recently seeking to stimulate. Apart 

 from a few valuable documents — notably Mr Newstead's 

 report on The Food of Some British Birds, published by 

 the Board of Agriculture — the evidence on which birds are 

 condemned as injurious is often of the flimsiest description. 

 Whatever the verdict may be, it should rest on a broad 

 basis of fact — on the examination of numerous birds from 

 different parts of the country, and throughout the year. 

 Our experience in this kind of inquiry has convinced us of 

 the danger of condemning more than a very few birds in 

 Britain. Notable in the short black list are three : the 

 Wood-Pigeon, the House-Sparrow, and the Carrion-Crow. 

 The vast majority of birds are directly beneficial ; a large 

 number levy a tax, but do far more good than harm ; 

 and of those which certainly do harm (especially at par- 

 ticular times of the year, and in particular areas where 

 they become very numerous) it must be admitted that 

 there is often much to be put on the other side of the 

 account. 



Our point in this Introduction is simply to suggest that 

 the problem of the food of birds is one which urgently 

 requires more widespread and sustained study. In a 

 previous paragraph we appealed for the co-operative study 

 of bird-migration — a problem of purely theoretical interest ; 



