88 FRESH WOODS. 



to which the species seems now to be limited, 

 and wood-pigeons might have become as 

 plentiful as rooks. This would not indeed 

 have been an unmixed blessing, for although 

 pigeons when "baked in a pie" are good 

 eating, and rooks are not (except when just 

 fledged), they are far more destructive to 

 crops than the too-much-abused rooks, for 

 the latter always prefer worms and insects to 

 seeds, while a quist will carry away in a day 

 the weight of his own body in peas, or beans, 

 or turnips. 



There must be some other reason for the 

 multiplicity of birds than the number of eggs 

 they lay, for magpies, notwithstanding the 

 magnificent nests they build, and the in- 

 accessible places in which they build them, and 

 although they lay at least half-a-dozen (some- 

 times eight) eggs, certainly do not increase 

 in anything like the same ratio as pigeons. 1 

 It is true that, owing to their murderous and 

 thieving propensities, they have made man 



1 Frank Buckland says that " the increase of wood- 

 pigeons is due to the over-preservation of game. Hawks 

 are shot down in order that pheasants may be preserved ; 

 the consequence is that the natural enemy of the wood- 

 pigeon being destroyed, they at once increase in a ratio 

 which could not take place if the hawks were allowed to 

 continue their natural functions of keeping down their 

 numbers." 



