PERSECUTION OF HARMLESS ANIMALS. 215 



the early grey of the morning, he spends the 

 greater part of the day in the covers and planta- 

 tions, blazing away at the unfortunate squirrels 

 as in all the energy of early May, and little 

 anticipating their fate, they bound joyously from 

 spray to spray among the spreading branches of 

 the oak or cunningly imitating the call-note of 

 the merry jay an accomplishment, by the way, 

 on which the young aspirant especially prides 

 himself, and to the acquisition of which he devotes 

 a considerable portion of his time he attracts 

 numbers of this social bird to his place of conceal- 

 ment and shoots them without remorse ; thus at 

 once assisting in the extermination of a beautiful 

 and now rapidly diminishing species, alarming the 

 game and driving it either into a neighbouring 

 preserve, or still worse, perhaps to an adjoining 

 waste land or common the territory of the gypsy 

 and the tramper and proclaiming his own where- 

 abouts to the surrounding population of evil- 

 doers. 



I have no wish to enter on an indiscriminate 

 defence of all my feathered favourites, or to shut 

 my eyes wilfully to the misdeeds of the carrion 

 crow, or the magpie. Their predilection for eggs 

 is undeniable ; it is strongly implanted in them by 

 nature, and amply do they suffer for the indul- 

 gence of this inherent propensity : but I firmly 



