1 6 BIRDS OF THE WAVE AND WOODLAND 



told, garden, shrubberies, orchards, spnineys, and meadow, 

 where birds are tempted to come by the planting of 

 fruit bushes and strawberry-beds in all directions, by the 

 numbers of elder trees and mountain ash set out, by the 

 encouragement of blackberries and dog-roses wherever they 

 can be allowed to grow, and where birds are tempted to stay 

 in winter by liberal scatterings of grain-foods and table-scraps. 

 Within this little estate there were one year forty nests of 

 thrush and blackbird. Now supposing these birds bred only 

 once in the year, which is very improbable, and reared only 

 three birds apiece, which is equally so, and that half were 

 killed or died during the year, there would then be left twice 

 as many thrushes as in the year before. Forty pairs would 

 become eighty ; eighty, a hundred and sixty ; a hundred and 

 sixty, three hundred and twenty, and so on till five years 

 later there would be over ten thousand pairs of thrushes 

 (allowing all along for the same excessive proportion 

 of casualties), breeding on thirty acres, and if each pair 

 hatched five birds, there would be fifty thousand thrushes 

 all together ! 



So it is well that thoughtful Nature leads off vast colonies 

 every year. Those that happen to stop to rest on Heligoland 

 stop there for good and all, for the Heligolanders eat them. 

 Those that get farther fare no better, for everybody eats 

 them, Belgian and Dutchman, Frenchman. Spaniard and 

 Portuguese, German, Swiss, Italian. And it is really a 



