98 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
bird not only slays an enemy of the farmer, and so 
saves him from present and future loss, but also in 
numberless instances prevents its victim from pro- 
viding for a succeeding generation, or generations, of 
equally mischievous creatures. In other words, it 
kills at the same time both a single actual victim, 
and many hundreds of possible future ones—and 
prevention, as we all know, is better than cure. 
Again, as I have before remarked, the slaughter of 
game must not be considered as commensurate with 
the destruction of agricultural produce. Pheasants, 
partridges, and other birds specially preserved are in 
no sense a necessary of life, but merely one of its 
luxuries, the unlicensed slaughter of a small number 
inflicting no injury whatever upon the majority of 
mankind, and causing but a trifling loss even to the 
favoured few for whose benefit they are bred and 
protected. We have, therefore, to take into account 
the actual damage caused by the jay in devouring 
corn, peas, beans, fruit, &c., and the chiefly theoretical 
injury brought about by its destruction of young game ; 
while, on the other hand, we must remember its 
services in the slaughter of mice, shrews, snails, slugs, 
and mischievous insects of different kinds, laying 
particular stress upon the havoc which these and their 
descendants would have caused had those which the 
bird devours been permitted to die a natural death. 
And I think it will be pretty generally admitted that 
the result is considerably in favour of the jay. 
So thought Waterton, whose life-long study of birds 
and their ways gave him an acknowledged right to 
