MAYFLY AND SWALLOWS 291 



decreasing, and in places disappearing altogether from 

 these Hampshire streams, and it is believed and said by 

 some of those who are concerned at these changes that 

 the swallow is accountable for them. I do not know 

 whether they have invented this brilliant idea them- 

 selves or have taken it ready-made from the water- 

 keeper. Probably the last, since he, the water-keeper, 

 is apt to regard all creatures that come to the waters 

 where his sacred fishes are with a dull, hostile suspicion 

 though in some cases he is not above adding to his 

 income by taking a few trout himself not indeed with 

 the dry fly, which is useless at night, but with the shoe- 

 net. In any case the question of exterminating the 

 swallows in all the villages near the rivers has been 

 seriously considered. Now, it is rather odd that this 

 notion about the swallow the martin is of course in- 

 cluded should have got about just when this bird has 

 itself fallen on evil times and is decreasing with us. 

 This decrease has, in all the parts of the country best 

 known to me, become increasingly rapid during the last 

 few years, and is probably due to new and improved 

 methods of taking the birds wholesale during migration 

 in France and Spain. Putting that matter aside, I 

 should like to ask those gentlemen who have decreed, 

 or would like to decree, the abolition of the swallow in 

 all the riverside villages, what they propose to do about 

 the swift ? 



One day last June (1902) I was walking with two 

 friends by the Itchen, when a little below the village of 



