SOCIETY AND SAFETY 



With three hundred pairs of eyes looking in all 

 directions, should not a flock be far harder for a foe 

 to approach than a single bird or a small party ? 

 Yet, in practice, a single wary rook seems as hard to 

 approach as a flock of three hundred rooks ; and my 

 experience is that pigeons and other birds are the 

 same in this. 



Watching, perhaps, becomes less arduous when 

 there are so many to watch, so there may be conve- 

 nience in numbers, even in those cases where there 

 is not increased safety. Sometimes numbers must 

 actually help the creature of prey, which can wait on 

 a flock and pick off members of it as they are required 

 for food. In large gatherings of insects, such as 

 grasshoppers of several species, which I have watched 

 this year, safety cannot be often, if it is ever, the bond 

 of union. It is doubtful whether safety can be the 

 bond of union among caterpillars that live on the 

 same web sometimes club together for the winter, 

 as do the grubs of the Glanville fritillary butterfly. 



A Poacher in Petticoats 



For generations to come, the deeds of "Buck," 

 our poacher in petticoats, will be discussed in the 

 group of villages where her grotesque figure was so 

 familiar. Rabbits are great talk for hamlet folk 

 and about this strange woman there was a very 

 romance of rabbits. To many sportsmen one rabbit 

 is just like another. I never stopped to criticize a 



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