THE HOMECOMERS 91 



minor accidents that civilization arranges for them, 

 the telegraph wires cut them down as they fly 

 swiftly across them in heedless flocks. This 

 morning I picked up a golden plover, thus stopped 

 in his migration to the northern moors, and lots 

 of poor people in the neighbourhood keep the pot 

 boiling in spring from such windfalls. The birds 

 must fall by the hundred thousand from this one 

 accident of the telegraph wire alone. 



Oh that man would be content to destroy our 

 songsters only by the accidents of civilization. 

 The tiny little bodies of our feathered nymphs are 

 still more coveted by the people of the Continent 

 for food. They are even valued as marks for the 

 ' sportsman's ' gun, and it is a standing marvel 

 to Englishmen to see grown Frenchmen take a 

 delight in shooting tits and willow -wrens sitting, 

 and gathering every wild thing in feathers that 

 they can see into their strings of trophies. They 

 are generally known to pay very heavily for their 

 ' sport ' in plagues of blight and caterpillar, from 

 which our soft-billed birds largely relieve us. 

 But in spring and in autumn the Frenchman and 

 the Italian have the chance to kill OUR birds as 

 they pass to or from the countries south of the 

 Alps, and that is a matter that concerns more 

 countries than the ones in which the shooting is 

 done. There is, moreover, far worse than shooting 

 afoot. 



Perhaps our womenkind were responsible for 

 the great French massacres of swallows that took 



