234 THE BALANCE OF NATURE 



abundantly proved to be most destructive in 

 young plantations, and must be kept rigorously 

 down. Sad, too, to say the squirrel seems of 

 late to be developing a vitiated taste for the 

 eggs and young of small birds, of which I have 

 had specific proof. Mention has already been 

 made of rats and voles, but a plea must be 

 recorded for the water vole, usually and wrongly 

 called the water rat. This pretty little creature, 

 more of a beaver in miniature than a rat, is a 

 vegetarian and must be classed as innocuous, 

 excepting in the rare cases where his tunnelling 

 may endanger the embankments of streams or 

 reservoirs, or where in severe winters he causes 

 damage to the osier-beds by barking their 

 shoots. 



Turning now to our British birds, we find a 

 long list against whom sentence of death, even 

 to extermination, has been ruthlessly decreed. 

 That grand bird the erne, or sea eagle, is already 

 gone as a breeding species ; his congener, the 

 golden eagle, survives in some numbers owing 

 to the protection accorded to him in some of 

 the larger properties in the north, and such is 

 also the case with the peregrine falcon. It is 

 sad that one cannot say the same for the 

 osprey. One after another of its former stations 

 have been cruelly robbed and harried, so that 



