"MY FEATHERED FRIENDS. & 



began to find, as shown in the preceding chapter, 

 that the arduous and poorly paid parish work must be 

 given up for a time, and literature be regarded awhile 

 as the crutch instead of as the staff. 



The perennial " Bird Question " was now occupying 

 his thoughts a good deal, and though he seldom, during 

 his career as an author, approached Natural History 

 from its economic side, he began industriously to collect 

 information respecting the influence of birds on agri- 

 culture and horticulture, by way of supplement to his 

 own experiences of very nearly twenty years. As a 

 result of this study, he found himself able to champion 

 the cause of the birds, and, towards the end of 1856, 

 " My Feathered Friends " embodied the result of his 

 investigations, and pointed out the extreme value of, 

 the smaller birds alike to gardener and farmer. Black- 

 birds and thrushes, it was shown, although they eat a 

 certain amount of garden fruit, amply atone for their 

 occasional mischief by the vast amount of snails and 

 noxious insects which they destroy. Some of the 

 finches are fond of corn ; but then, on the other hand, 

 they feed themselves partially, and their young entirely, 

 with some of the most troublesome and mischievous of 

 all the farmer's foes. And so, though undoubtedly 

 injurious at one season of the year, they are as 

 undoubtedly beneficial at another. The rook steals 

 walnuts and potatoes, and also visits the corn-stacks 

 at times ; but then the benefit which the same bird 

 confers upon the farmer by the wholesale slaughter of 

 wire-worms and other root-feeding grubs is simply 



