20 GAME rKESERYEKS AXD BIED PRESERVERS. 



for every one that she would hear were the owner 

 of this property to listen to the advice of certain 

 naturalists and send away his cruel keepers, 

 leaving the balance in nature to adjust itself. 



It is a great mistake to imagine that man 

 drives birds away by cultivating the surface of 

 the earth. He feeds hundreds in feeding him- 

 self, and they are infinitely more numerous in 

 our gardens and on our farms than in the 

 primeval forest where his foot never penetrates, 

 or on the great fertile plains where he has not 

 yet turned the earth. 



On a stormy November day in the High- 

 lands of Scotland, after walking for hoiu:s on 

 uncultivated ground and scarcely seeing a bird 

 except a few black game or an occasional wood- 

 cock or snipe, on coming to a stubble field, 

 should it be only of six or eight acres in extent, 

 we always find it ahve with birds of all sorts ; 

 wild ducks, curlews, oyster catchers, gulls, rooks, 

 crows, and clouds of small birds will have assem- 

 bled from all the country round. 



