354 GAME BIRDS IN POPULOUS DISTRICTS. 



not altogether as we trust without evidence or without 

 reason, there are certain sorts of birds that follow 

 cultivation, and really prosper nowhere else except 

 near the destroyer's threshold, but we have our bad 

 seasons and our good seasons, and birds live and die, 

 according to no known rule : some years it is hard to 

 rear the chicks of hand reared fowl, at all though 

 hatched successfully because of the appearance of 

 epidemic disease, to which various names and causes are 

 assigned; it is then said to be a bad year for birds. 



Now as to this question of certain sorts of game 

 following cultivation, and thriving among the haunts 

 and habitations of man, in addition to the humbler 

 feathered races which we have already mentioned as 

 being attendants upon him. Mr. Herbert (the American 

 " Frank Forrester ") a well-known authority upon game 

 and sporting matters, has the following observations 

 upon the subject, in his work on American Field Sports, 

 which more than bear out what we have said with 

 reference to it: 



" It has been alleged (he says) that the increase of population, 

 the spread of cultivation, and the transfiguration of woods 

 and wastes into corn lands and pastures, are in themselves 

 an irremediable cause for the disappearance of all the various 

 kinds of game. Were this the case it would be needless 

 to waste words on the subject: but so far is it from being 

 the case, that with regard to very many kinds of game, the 

 very converse of the proposition is true. The wild turkey, the 

 pinnated grouse and its congener the ruffled grouse, as also 

 the spruce partridge, all unquestionably do make their home 

 in the wilderness; the last-named there exclusively. But all 

 the others (birds) without exception prefer the vicinity of 

 cultivation, on account of the plenty, and choicer quality of 

 the food ; and are nowhere found in such abundance, as in 



