314 Natures Militia 



effectual means of dealing with them. When the in- 

 fliction comes, we talk mysteriously of ' blight ' and 

 ' weather '; and it seldom occurs to us to connect the 

 increase of grubs with the destruction of birds, even 

 though we must know, as a matter of fact, that the 

 latter live mainly upon the former, and that therefore 

 for every bird killed, so many grubs must be left 

 alive. 



However, as before said, we are beginning to wake 

 up, and in some cases the awakening has been so rude 

 that further slumbers are almost impossible. 



It is now some thirty years since piteous complaints 

 were rife in Germany and Switzerland of the alarming 

 increase in the number of destructive insects, which 

 made their appearance in overwhelming swarms, and 

 inflicted the greatest injury on the fields. And at last 

 it occurred to the authorities that insects had multiplied 

 because birds had to so large an extent vanished. The 

 * militia ' had, in fact, been either killed off or driven 

 away ; they had been destroyed in the most insane 

 manner, in ignorance and sheer wantonness ; and also 

 they had been * improved ' away by the spread of agri- 

 culture. In whatsoever way it had come to pass, the 

 result was the same — there were fewer birds, there 

 were more grubs ; and as the latter increase much 

 more rapidly than the former, the prospect was a 

 dismal one. The land was being devoured. 



And it was devoured, partly at least, because more 

 had been taken into cultivation. For woods and 

 thickets and groups of trees had been cut down to 

 make way for fields ; and land being precious, hedges 

 were considered an unnecessary extravagance. There 

 are, of course, still extensive woods and forests in. 



