78 THE DAILY LIFE OF OUR FAEM. 



they mean me real service, especially as the rooks begin 

 to settle on the same tract too. 



Our birds, bar blackbirds, which after repeated ex- 

 postulation I have allowed the gardener to wage war 

 on, not altogether so reluctantly either, as they have 

 to my mind a sneaking element in their disposition ; 

 always haunting the low branches of the bushes, mis- 

 trusting one's approach more than any other of the 

 feathered tribes, and not only that, but screaming an 

 alarm to the whole neighbourhood as they start off 

 through the brushwood — our birds, I say, selves and 

 nests, we religiously spare, only trusting that we may 

 not be ultimately disappointed of the benefit they are 

 said to work by the extermination of the insect hordes. 

 Our cocks and hens about the homestead are a nuisance 

 upon all fields but the pasture. They have such an 

 aptitude not only to scratch and roll where they 

 needn't, but to nip off the green seedlings, turnip, 

 cabbage, &c., as soon as they appear above the sur- 

 face. I cannot comprehend how Mr. Mechi finds them 

 do him such striking service as he says they do. 



The mention of seedlings brings to my mind a curious 

 circumstance related to me lately by a clergyman who is 

 successful in gardening. Last autumn he cut down the 

 stalks of a bed of Jerusalem artichokes, and threw 

 them at random upon the rubbish heap. The other 

 day, having occasion to excavate the lower strata of 

 that deposit for stuff wherewith to condiment a flower- 

 bed, on removing the undecayed artichoke stems, he 

 found to his astonishment a tiny bulb attached to every 

 joint of the stem. One knows that once planted this 

 root is difficult to exterminate, but it was a wrinkle to 

 find that the plant had such extraordinary reproductive 



