EEPORTS OF SOCIETIES. 



983 



fruit as ever was seen in this coun- 

 try, the war against the small birds 

 became very animated, not only 

 have the guns been heard popping 

 in many country parishes, but men 

 have shown themselves in markets 

 and fairs, all hung over with strings 

 of dead finches, and robins, and 

 thrushes, and sparrows, as an ad- 

 vertisement in their line of business. 

 Members of sparrow clubs have met, 

 and awarded prizes, and dined, and 

 drunk destruction to the order of 

 birds. One prize winner, the other 

 day, boasted of having killed 1,860 

 sparrows in the course of the year. 

 A lady, meantime, had at one stroke 

 killed with strychnine 800 small 

 birds in her garden : and if one 

 owner of a garden has done such a 

 thing, how many more may have 

 lessened the number of our winged 

 friends ? The discovery of the effi- 

 cacy of poisoned grain in killing off 

 the birds has v/rought prodigiously. 

 One rookery after another has gone 

 to destruction — the birds dropping 

 in their flight, and lying dead 

 all over the lawns and fields, while 

 their young are starving in the nests. 

 There has been silence in many 

 lanes and copses formerly all alive 

 with songsters ; and travelled men 

 have observed, in some parts of the 

 country, that it was becoming almost 

 like France for the scarcity of birds. 

 This is a part of the picture of this 

 year; but it is not the whole. In 



the same districts there are now 

 scores of old women and boys em- 

 ployed in trying to save the fruit 

 from the caterpillars. There are 

 more weeders than ever in the fields 

 and gardens, because the weeds 

 never were so rampant, country 

 gentlemen and ladies are declaring 

 that they must give up gardening, 

 on account of the overwhelming in- 

 crease of the wireworm and other 

 vermin. The mice devoured the 

 bulbs so as to spoil their spring 

 show of flowers : and now between 

 the wireworm, aphides, grubs, cater- 

 pillars, and the prospect of wasps, 

 there is little encouragement to gar- 

 deners. There never was anything 

 like this plague of insects in former 

 years. The farmer smiles grimly 

 at those distresses of the gentry, 

 for what are they compared with his? 

 If they would look at the white- 

 worm, and the wireworm, and the 

 fly (as it will be presently) in the 

 fields, they would be ashamed of 

 complaining of injury to mere flowers 

 and fruit. His prospect is too like 

 that of the French farmers, when 

 the practice of killing ofi" the birds 

 brought three bad harvests in suc- 

 cession (1853-1856). In one of those 

 three years the wire-worm destroyed, 

 in one department alone, £160,000 

 of corn ; and at that rate we shall 

 have to pay, very soon, if we allow 

 ignorant men, and ladies, and boys, 

 to destroy the natural check upon 



