BIRDS THAT FOLLOW THE PLOUGH. 355 



those localities which afford a combination of rough, wild 

 lying ground, with highly cultivated land. Neither woodcock 

 nor quail (he goes on to say) are ever found in the depths 

 of the forest, aloof from human habitations; though both 

 require woodland, as a sine qua non for their habitation. 

 Moreover in places where they are entirely unknown to the 

 first settlers, where they do not in fact exist at all, they 

 speedily become abundant, as soon as the axe levels the forest, 

 and the admitted sunbeams awaken the germs of that animal 

 and vegetable life on which the birds subsist." "It maybe 

 assumed at once, that the spread of agriculture and civilization, 

 in themselves, have no injurious operations, but rather the 

 reverse, on any kind of winged game, and that in some 

 instances the progress of one is simultaneous with the increased 

 numbers of the other." * 



This emphatic statement, proceeding 1 from the pen 

 of an American sportsman of authority, half a century 

 back, before the time when the great rush of population 

 commenced towards the western hemisphere, is very 

 significant, because there was then daily opportunity 

 of seeing what was the stock of winged game in the 

 primeval solitudes, compared with the amount found 

 in the neighbourhood of the settlements and as we 

 have seen, Frank Forrester distinctly maintains, as a 

 matter of actual fact within his own cognizance, that 

 the birds settled and flourished amid the dwellings of 

 man, and feasted on the insects turned up by his plough 

 and the grain that fell from his sheaves and, shall 

 we say it ? upon his growing crops themselves. Yes ! 

 there can be no doubt about it ; the birds will eat the 

 farmer's corn; so will his horses; so will his servants, 



* Frank Forrester's Field Sports of the United States, published New 

 York 1852, Vol. i., pp. 14 to 17. (Frank Forrester was the nom de 

 plume of Mr. Henry William Herbert, and this description was written 

 circa 1845). 



