FINCHES. 147 
were it not to their disadvantage to do so, seem to 
consider that even to tolerate it is impossible. “TI 
aml sonny torsays) writes: Mr RK. |. W. Purdy; of 
Aylsham, to me, “ that we are obliged to prosecute a 
never-ceasing warfare with the bullfinches ; otherwise 
our crop of fruit would be utterly destroyed. I 
believe at certain seasons they consume a number of 
seeds of noxious plants, and I often regret being 
compelled to kill such beautiful birds.” 
Not at all times, however, is the bullfinch thus 
mischievous in a garden. The Rev. F. O. Morris, 
for instance, in one of his well-known letters to the 
Times, says :—‘‘ I could say much, too, for that most 
beautiful bird the bullfinch, which, often as it has 
visited my garden in the spring, and then only as it 
passed on from wood to wood, has never done me 
any damage to the value of the head of a pin that I 
have been able to find out.” 
The second theory, which has been suggested to 
me by the Rev. M.C. H. Bird, is of a different nature 
altogether. ‘‘ May we not compare the bullfinch,” 
he writes, ‘to the pruning-knife or disbudder of 
Nature? We know that heavy cropping weakens 
trees, stops growth of wood, ‘draws the land,’ &c. 
May not the bullfinch, therefore, do good as to 
natural growth of trees, without reference to their 
‘bearing,’ when artificially pruned by man?” 
In this suggestion there seems much truth, although, 
of course, it does not in any way affect the position. 
of the bullfinch as regards its present relations with. 
man. I have only mentioned the bird, indeed, in 
