Utility and Economy of Birds 



tural Committees to destroy ROOKERIES, 

 extended the time for burning gorse and 

 heather, and, finally, by reading into the law 

 what was obviously never intended to be 

 there, and by stretching language beyond its 

 natural meaning, proclaimed that SPARROWS 

 were " vermin " and might therefore be de- 

 stroyed by poison on the land, in contravention 

 of the Protection of Animals Act (Royal 

 Society for the Protection of Birds: Annual 

 Report, 1918). 



I have been careful to quote from my book 

 of newspaper cuttings chronologically, and it 

 is therefore remarkable to find that the next 

 entry reads : " Crops eaten by Caterpillars 

 A seven-mile front A devastating plague 

 of caterpillars reported from the Peak dis- 

 trict of Derbyshire " (Daily Mail, 13^.17). 

 Three days later the newspapers announced : 

 " The Caterpillars' new push Stripping the 

 Westmorland fells" (Daily Mail, i6.vi.i7). 

 Inspectors of the Board of Agriculture, in- 

 vestigating the cause of the plague, attri- 

 buted this extraordinary abundance of the 

 caterpillars of the Antler-moth mainly to the 



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