ECOLOGICAL 211 



precise enough to warrant us in saying to which side — for or against 

 agricultural interests — the balance swings. 



It is also to be noted that the spread of agriculture is in itself 

 bound to have a nemesis by promoting artificial situations. The 

 Colorado Beetle was of no great moment as long as it fed in Colorado 

 on its original food-plant, the Sand Bur Solanum, but when fields of 

 potato (another Solanum) afforded abundance of appropriate food, 

 and when field was joined to field across the United States, then 

 there was a plague — still unconquered. 



Reduction of Shelter. — The reduction of shelter includes 



(a) the extension of farm-lands over corners which had long retained 

 their natural wildness, such as furze-covered commons where birds 

 like Yellow Buntings used to breed, or slopes where the Badger or 

 Brock used to burrow (how many local names begin with Brock!); 



(b) the stripping and restriction of the old-fashioned big hedges, 

 which used to shelter useful mammals like Hedgehogs and useful 

 birds like Hedge-sparrows; (c) the replacement of hedges by wire 

 fences and stone walls ; (d) the making of broad roads, at present so 

 frequent, and in some cases necessary, the first stage being usually 

 the removal of the often luxuriant strips on either side, and the 

 substitution of covered-in drains for the old-fashioned ditches, in or 

 about which many creatures had their homes. 



We must repeat that the ranks of the injurious are thinned as 

 well as those of the beneficial; but there can be no hesitation in 

 saying that, from the agriculturist's point of view, there is much to 

 be said for such mammals as hedgehog, weasel, and shrews, and for 

 such birds as thrush and blackbird, titmice and wheatear, robin and 

 cuckoo. Scores might be added which are more or less thirled to 

 hedgerows and wild corners. Slow-worms, which are almost restricted 

 to wild places, feed largely on slugs; lizards are mainly insectivorous; 

 frogs and toads are all to the good; and all these are dependent for 

 continuance on the persistence of appropriate wild shelter. 



Old and New. — In old days the cutting down of forests meant 

 the disappearance of many animals, such as the Woodland Reindeer 

 and the Elk, the Beaver and the Bear, the Wolf and the Lynx ; and 

 our present point is that the dwindling of copses, hedgerows, and 

 wild strips, which are the "forests" for many small creatures, is 

 being followed — and that inevitably — by a reduction in our fauna. 



It is true, no doubt, that the wild fauna of Britain has not, as a 

 matter of fact, diminished quantitatively in modern times; but it 

 has lost in quality. There has been a replacement of larger by smaller 

 forms of life, and of the visible by the invisible. As Ritchie proves 

 so convincingly in his great book. The Influence of Man on the 

 Animal Life of Scotland (Cambridge, 1920), man "lops off the 

 giants at the head of the scale, and adds pigmies at the bottom — 

 insect marauders which enter unobserved and are often first noticed 



