GOLDFINCHES AT RYME INTRINSICA 217 



since they had been protected by law all the year 

 round. 



He could not have given me more agreeable news. 

 I remembered with a keen sense of satisfaction that 

 the late Mr. Mansel Pleydell-Bouverie, of Whatcombe 

 in Dorset, had written to me asking my advice in draw- 

 ing up a new bird-protection order for the county, 

 and that in replying I had strongly urged him to secure 

 the fullest protection the law can afford to this most 

 charming and most persecuted of all small birds. 



Two or three years before that date I spent several 

 weeks in Somerset, walking a good deal, without once 

 seeing or hearing a goldfinch, yet if I had come within 

 fifty yards of a copse or orchard inhabited by a pair, 

 their sharp, unmistakable whit-whit would have ad- 

 vertised their presence. At Wells I made the ac- 

 quaintance of a man past middle age who had taken 

 to bird-catching as a boy and still followed that fascinat- 

 ing vocation. " Have you never had goldfinches in 

 these parts ? " I asked him ; to which he replied that 

 he remembered the time when they were abundant, 

 but for the last thirty years or longer they had been 

 steadily decreasing and were now practically gone. 

 They had gone because they were too much sought 

 after ; then he added : " I daresay they would come 

 again if there was a law made to stop us from catching 

 them." I expressed the hope that such a law would 

 come in time, at which he shook his head and grunted. 

 Now Somerset has such a law and I hear that gold- 

 finches are again to be seen in the Wells district. In 



