270 THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
the crevices of the bark and in the buds of trees. In spring they 
are very active after aphides. Blackcaps also eat the aphis readily, 
especially in rose bushes, where there are legions. I would espe- 
cially commend this bird to the reader’s notice. Nor can too much 
protection be extended to the goldfinch, which is met with in the 
fields and meadows; the siskin, which frequents meadows near the 
water; the chats, which take up their abode in the vines, and hunt 
down a very mischievous insect, the pyrale; the redstart of our 
gardens; the various tree-creepers; and the wren and the nut- 
hatch, whose business of life it is to free our trees and shrubs of a 
host of small insect foes. 
The grosbeaks are graminivorous, and sometimes do more harm 
than good; but it should be remembered all live on insects while 
young. They should therefore be left in peace whilst they are 
bringing up their young, and only meddled with subseqnently, when 
they betake themselves to pillage. This is not the opinion of many 
competent authorities, and some persons will perhaps accuse me of 
ingratitude to the small birds. For this I am prepared, and freely 
admit beforehand that, in matters agricultural, I set all sentiment 
aside. 
Granting that grosbeaks, sparrows, chaflinches, and bullfinches 
rid us of a host of insects to feed their young, I still shall shoot the 
sparrows when I find them attacking my rows of peas, or the 
grosbeaks robbing the cherries, or the bullfinches picking off the 
buds of the fruit-trees, or the chaffinches working among the seeds 
of the oil crops. 
It is all very well for dwellers in towns to take the part of the 
birds. There they dono harm. There are no fruit-trees, no crops. 
They cheer us with their songs as they flit before our windows. 
Nothing can be said against them. But in the country it is dif- 
ferent. There are too many difficulties to be faced already in the 
rearing of our crops, as drought and frost and wet, to allow room 
for zsthetic considerations in favour of pillagers. 
No one is more anxious than I am for the protection of all 
useful creatures. This is one reason why I make a distinction 
between those which are, in my opinion, unequivocally useful and 
others which, in certain circumstances, may prove mischievous. It 
must not be forgotten that country people are closer observers of 
nature than others; and any one asserting that the sparrow, the 
chaftinch, the bullfinch, the linnet, or the goldtinch were immaculate 
birds, would run the risk of being laughed at to his face, and having 
any advice he offered, however good and authoritative, in its turn 
disregarded. 
I fully recognize the necessity of protecting the small birds in 
the woods and hedges and waysides, where they are always useful ; 
of leaving the linnets and goldfinches unmolested so long as they 
confine themselves to the seeds of weeds and noxious plants; but it 
appears to me to be going too far to blame the farmer who protects 
his crops of millet and flax from the linnets, or the gardener who 
shoots down the goldfinches when they try to steal the seeds of his 
lettuce and scorzonera. 
