226 BIRDS AND MAN 



every summer, and from whence a person in the 

 neighbourhood obtains si^ecimens at all times of the 

 year, with which to supply the London bird-stufiers." 

 When the district worked by Smithers, and 

 the neighbouring commons round Godalming, 

 where Newman in his Letters of Rusticus says he 

 had seen the " tops of the furze quite aUve with 

 these birds," had been depleted, other favourite 

 haunts of the little doomed furze-lover were visited, 

 and for a time yielded a rich harvest. In a few 

 years the bird was practically extirpated ; in the 

 sixties and seventies it was common, now there are 

 many young ornithologists with us who have never 

 seen it (in this country at all events) in a state of 

 nature. In some cases even persons interested in 

 bird Ufe, some of them naturalists too, did not know 

 what was going on in their immediate neighbour- 

 hood until after the bird was gone. I met with a 

 case of the kind, a vey strange case indeed, in the 

 summer of 1899, at a place near the south coast 

 where the bird was common after it had been 

 destroyed in Surrey, but does not now exist. In 

 my search for information I paid a visit to the 

 octogenarian vicar of a small rustic village. He 

 was a native of the parish, and loved his home above 

 all places, even as White loved Selborne, and had been 



