SHRIKES AND DAWS. 99 
judge as to their merits. Not that he attempts to 
deny or to gloss over the mischievous proceedings to 
which the bird is at certain times addicted. On the 
contrary, he carefully recapitulates the various ways in 
which it is inimical to man, while at the same time 
expressing his sincere conviction that its merits out- 
welgh its faults. ‘Our peas and ripe cherries,” he 
writes, in one of his celebrated essays, ‘‘ have attrac- 
tions which this well-known bird cannot resist. To 
these it unfortunately resorts, and loses its life by the 
gun of the watchful gardener, who never fails to 
magnify a petty act of plunder into a downright com- 
mussion of felony. ~ <2 . The gardener, in discharg- 
ing his gun at it, is sure to make bad worse by his 
officious interference ; for, in his eagerness to kill the 
poor bird, he never once reflects that the contents of 
his piece do ten times more harm to the fruit and to 
the tender shoots of the cherry-tree than the dreaded 
presence of half a dozen jays, all with empty 
Stomachs..!5 (°°. (It is) a bird which will ever have 
a friend in me, notwithstanding its acknowledged 
depredations in gardens and in orchards. Its_pilfer- 
ings are of short duration: they are too trivial to 
cause uneasiness, and of far too light a nature to 
demand the forfeiture of life.” 
I may here, perhaps, be permitted to call attention 
to the fact that the slaughter of birds by gardeners is 
not always due to the personal wishes of the men 
themselves. Only a day or two ago I found a neigh- 
bour’s gardener armed with a gun, and on the watch 
for starlings, which, he said, were very apt to steal 
