Utility and Egonomy of Birds 
tural Committees to destroy ROOKERIES, 
extended the time for burning gorse and 
heather, and, finally, by reading into the law 
what was obviously never intended to be 
there, and by stretching language beyond its 
natural meaning, proclaimed that SPARROWS 
were ‘‘vermin’”’ and might therefore be de- 
stroyed by poison on the land, in contravention 
of the Protection of Animals Act (Royal 
Society for the Protection of Birds: Annual 
Report, 1918). 
I have been careful to quote from my book 
of newspaper cuttings chronologically, and it 
is therefore remarkable to find that the next 
entry reads: ‘‘ Crops eaten by Caterpillars 
—A seven-mile front—A devastating plague 
of caterpillars reported from the Peak dis- 
trict of Derbyshire’’ (Daily Mal, 13.v.17). 
Three days later the newspapers announced: 
“The Caterpillars’ new push—-Stripping the 
Westmorland fells’? (Daily Mail, 16.vi.17). 
Inspectors of the Board of Agriculture, in- 
vestigating the cause of the plague, attri- 
buted this extraordinary abundance of the 
caterpillars of the Antler-moth mainly to the 
34 
