410 



ENGLISH BIRD-LIFE 



While my very limited experience does not warrant geii 

 eralization in regard to the attractiveness and musical abil- 

 ity of English birds as compared with ours, there can be no 

 question concerning their greater abundance. Everywhere 

 I was impressed with the truth of this observation, and I 

 cannot conclude this article without some attempt to inquire 

 into the causes underlying this marked numerical dif- 

 ference. 



A Sitting Eider (Somateria molissima) 

 Note the circlet of down about the nest 



We have, as I have before remarked, a larger number of 

 species, and in our northern states, birds are more rigidly 

 protected than they are in England, where bird-nesting is 

 universal and bird-trapping locally countenanced. 



A variety of factors seem to have operated in producing 

 the results now so noticeable to an American. The most fun- 

 damental and far-reaching in its influence appears to lie in 

 the fact that English birds are less niigratory, as a whole, 



