16 THE BIRDS OF SHERWOOD FOREST. 
long grass where they coil themselves up, and have 
always been taken in traps baited with rabbits, hares, 
or woodpigeons. Adders are included amongst the 
vermin to be destroyed on the marquis’s property ; but 
we believe they do not injure game. In four years and 
a half, the sum paid on the estate of Culzean and 
Craiglure moors, in Ayrshire, for vermin destroyed by 
the keepers, amounted to 23J/. 15s. 10d.” 
The following is a list of the vermin of all kinds 
killed from June 25, 1850, to November 25, 1854:— 
RE, On! aie 32 | Ash-coloured Hawks . . 310 
eae. 2) Ot So eee 19 | Kestrel Hawks. . . . 281 
SPE eb en 1 | Merlin Hawks): 2 .<j 50m 
Cais .-. . . . . . 1296 | Small-Horned Owls. . peeee 
Ne 2 | Large Glede Owls. . . 113 
meen ee 43 | Common Fern Owls . . 33 
Stoat Weasels. . . . 2132 | Yellow Barn Owls... 21 
Common Weaseis . . 1942 | Ravens «| . ? dete eae 
Rats killed in yee 12.586 Hoody, or Carrion Crows 225 
and hedges . r Magpies . . « «so mee 
Hedgehops’ °. . . . 1093 | Jaypies ~5 2 eee 4 
Adders .. ... 9...) 267 | Jackdawau) 3) =) ee 
Falcon Hawks. .. . 6 
Buzzard Hawks . . . 7 Total. . .. -«<ja.8 
It is certain that the wholesale destruction of animals 
which act as a check to the undue multiplication of 
other classes of life, cannct fail to operate in many ways 
injuriously to the welfare of the landowner and the 
agriculturist. A proprietor like the Marquis of Ailsa 
may, by such an indiscriminate slaughter, secure a slight 
increase in the number of partridges and pheasants on 
his estates; but nature’s equilibrium cannot be dis- 
turbed with impunity, and perchance he little dreams 
how deeply his own pocket and that of his tenants are 
touched by such a course. The woodpigeon, the field- 
