w 
BIRD ENEMIES. 19 
to those thus cut off, and that it is this extra or ar- 
tificial destruction that disturbs the balance of nature. 
The operation of natural causes keeps the birds in 
check, but the greed of the collectors and milliners 
tends to their extinction. 
I can pardon a man who wishes to make a collec- 
tion of eggs and birds for his own private use, if he 
will content himself with one or two specimens of a 
kind, though he will find any collection much less 
satisfactory and less valuable than he imagines, but 
the professional nest-robber and skin collector should 
be put down, either by legislation or with dogs and 
shot-guns. ) 
I have remarked above that there is probably very 
little truth in the popular notion that snakes can 
“charm” birds. But two of my correspondents have 
each furnished me with an incident from his own ex- 
perience, which seems to confirm the popular belief. 
One of them writes from Georgia as follows :— 
“Some twenty-eight years ago I was in Calaveras 
County, California, engaged in cutting lumber. One 
day in coming out of the camp or cabin, my attention 
was attracted to the curious action of a quail in the 
air, which, instead of flying low and straight ahead as 
usual, was some fifty feet high, flying in a circle, and 
uttering cries of distress. I watched the bird and 
saw it gradually descend, and following with my eye 
in a line from the bird to the ground saw a large 
snake with head erect and some ten or twelve inches 
above the ground, and mouth wide open, and as far 
as I could see, gazing intently on the quail (I was 
about thirty feet from the snake). The quail gradu- 
ally descended, its circles growing smaller and smaller 
and all the time uttering cries of distress, until its feet 
