viil.] PLANTS AND ANIMALS. 133° 
killing the rich grasses as they went, till they met 
another forest coming up from below, and fought it 
for many a year, till both made peace, and lived 
quietly side by side for ages.”—Kzingsley, “ Madam 
How.” 
So will the consequences be however we interfere 
with Nature, whom Canon Kingsley speaks of as 
Madam How. If we but cut a drain through a wood 
or common, we shall assuredly interfere with the flora 
of such district, and when we have done that other 
changes must follow. Or if we commence at the 
other end of the series and destroy the small birds— 
as until recently was extensively done, under the 
supposition that they destroyed the fruit crop, and 
there are still farmers and others sufficiently ignorant 
to follow the same destructive method. Kill off the 
small birds to save your fruit trees, and what will you 
have as the result? Insects swarming everywhere; 
leaves all yellow and riddled with holes, or reduced 
to skeletons; flower-buds destroyed, and the fruit 
that has managed to set all maggoty. This is the 
price ignorant man pays for his senseless interference. _ 
Because the birds rob him of a little fruit he snares 
or shoots them, and as the result loses all that which 
he had killed the birds to protect a hundredth part 
of. Recently we came across a paragraph we had cut 
from the ‘ Daily News,” in 1865 or ’6—we are un- 
certain which—but it so admirably illustrates the 
results of this interference that we insert it here :— 
“EFFECTS OF DESTROYING SMALL BirDs.—The pheno- 
mena of the present season are remarkable. If we go for 
shade into the woods in this leafy month of June we stop 
