BIRDS AND GARDENS 215 



I regret to say, arrived this morning to recon- 

 noitre : but the garden boy pelted him with 

 stones, and he departed for a time. 



The second on my Index is the handsome 

 and cruel jay a foe to other birds ; for have 

 I not seen a nest of nearly fledged young black- 

 birds destroyed by him each poor birdling 

 split open as if with a knife, and only its heart 

 eaten by its barbarous enemy. But the spar- 

 row that dirty, impudent, vulgar, thieving 

 ruffian of the garden he is the real foe ; and 

 for him I have no pity. It is he " the Avian 

 rat" as that great and wise woman, Eleanor 

 Ormerod, called him it is he who evicts my 

 house- martins, and drives them from the nests 

 above my window year after year, just as they 

 are finished. It is he who tears every Crocus 

 to pieces, who nips the heads off the Poly- 

 anthus, who eats the Peas, who but I will 

 stop, for long is the list of his iniquities. He 

 carries his low manners and customs with him 

 wherever he goes, so that his name has become 

 a by-word among the natives of India. He 

 has turned into a very scourge to the good, 



