THE DARTFORD WARBLER 225 



adds : "As most British collectors must now be 

 supplied with the eggs of the furze wren, I trust 

 Mr Smithers will be more sparing in the future." 

 So little sparing was he, that when he died, but few 

 birds were left for others of his detestable trade 

 who came after him. 



Three or four years ago I got in conversation 

 with a heath- cutter on Milford Common, a singular 

 and brutal-looking fellow, of the half-Gypsy Devil's 

 Punch-Bowl type, described so ably by Baring- 

 Gould in his Broom Squire. He told me that when 

 he was a boy, about thirty-five years ago, the furze 

 wren was common in all that part of the country, 

 until Smithers' offer of a shilling for every clutch 

 of eggs, had set the boys from all the villages in the 

 district hunting for the nests. Many a shilling 

 had he been paid for the nests he found, but in a 

 few years the birds became rare ; and he added 

 that he had not now seen one for a very long time. 



In Clark's Kennedy's Birds of Berkshire and 

 Buckinghamshire we get a glimpse of the furze 

 wren collecting business at an earlier date and 

 nearer the metropolis. In 1868 he wrote : " The 

 only locality in the two counties in which this 

 species is at all numerous, is a common in the 

 vicinity of Sunninghill, where it is found breeding 



