- 6 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
noticing enemies, and seldom recognising friends, he 
comes by degrees to receive the impression that the 
great majority, if not the whole, of living beings are 
at war with himself, and that he has very much to 
lose from Nature, and very little to gain. 
The evil doings of Nature, indeed, are flaunted in 
our faces, as though she were ostentatiously proud of 
her power; her good deeds are carefully concealed 
from us, as though she were half ashamed of them, 
and only by long and careful search can we find 
them out. And, in far too many cases, from want 
of this study, and acting upon our preconceived im- 
pressions, we not only fail to appreciate the benefits 
conferred on us by friendly beings, but, led astray by 
imperfect observations and false theories, actually 
persecute and destroy our natural and invaluable 
allies. 
In no group of creatures has this unfortunate 
tendency been more strikingly exemplified than in 
that of the Birps, with which we are brought 
more closely into contact, perhaps, than with the 
members of any other of the great divisions of the 
animal world. Almost from the earliest times of 
which we have any agricultural record, birds, as a 
class, have been treated as the foes of the husbands 
man, and no efforts have been spared, and no 
efforts are in many cases spared even now, to 
reduce or even to exterminate them, in the hope 
of preserving the crops from their real or supposed 
depredations. 
There is something to be said upon the side of the 
