BIRD-LIFE OF THE SPANISH SPRING-TIIME. 259 



Such a spectacle would probably break the heart of an 

 orthodox British gamekeeper ; to preserve any fair head 

 of game in presence of such an array of " vermin " — both 

 powerful raptores and cunning egg-thieves — he would 

 certainly assert to be impossible. So, in England, it 

 probably would be ; yet here our game-books record bags 

 varying from 150 to BOO partridge, besides other game, in 

 a day, and totals of from 1,000 to 1,'200 head and upwards 

 in a fortnight's shooting. Yet those who advocate the 

 status quo in nature and condemn dogmatically any inter- 

 ference therewith by the hand of man, would be wrong 

 in jumping to the conclusion that the co-existence in 

 Spain of a considerable head of game with a host of their 

 most powerful enemies, is any solid substantiation of their 

 theories, in a general sense. 



To this question of nature's balance of life we may 

 devote a little space ; it is seldom so simple as at first sight 

 may appear. Here in Spain its solution depends on factors 

 some of which do not exist and would have, consequently, 

 no bearing at home ; but the general features of the par- 

 ticular case in point may be summed up in three lines : 

 (1) Spain is a land teeming with reptile-life ; (2) The 

 reptiles in the aggregate are the most deadly enemies 

 to game ; and (3) it is upon reptiles that the raptorial 

 birds habitually prey. 



The large eagles, it is true, prefer rabbits and partridges 

 to anything else; but the "catch" of their smaller 

 relatives, the Booted and Serpent-Eagles, the Kites, 

 Buzzards and Hawks, is composed chiefly of reptiles- 

 lizards, snakes, blindworms, salamanders, and the like 

 — as well as the larger insects, such as locusts, cicadas, 

 scorpions, grasshoppers, the huge horned scarabsei and 

 other coleoptera of which so great a variety abound in 

 Southern Spain. At the end of this chapter we annex a 

 brief analysis, the result of a number of post-mortem 

 examinations of the crops and stomachs of various raptorial 

 birds, which shows pretty conclusively that while game, 

 etc., is included in their iinniu, by far the greater portion 

 of their attack is directed against the reptile race — itself 



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