STICKS TO BEAT STARLINGS 161 



takes it for granted that they are there, all for 

 plunder, and that all are eating but this is a 

 wrong idea. The greater number full of another 

 kind of excitement touch nothing, and dead 

 barkless trees may be seen as crowded as those 

 which are loaded with fruit. Some fruit, as I say, 

 they do destroy, and this, in actual quantity, may 

 amount to a good deal. But let anybody see the 

 orchards in the west of England where starlings 

 are most abundant during the gathering-time, and 

 he may judge as to the proportion of harm that the 

 birds do. It is, in fact, infinitesimal, not worth the 

 thinking of, a negligeable quantity. Yet in the same 

 year that mountains of fruit are thrown away, or left 

 ungathered, when it may rot rather than that the 

 poor or indeed anybody should buy it cheap, you 

 will hear men talk of the starlings. 



Why, then, do the starlings "infest"? Why 

 should they be persecuted? Because they sleep 

 together, in the space of, perhaps, a quarter of an 

 acre here and there one sole dormitory in a large 

 tract of country ? Is that their crime ? For myself 

 I see not where the harm of this can lie, but sup- 

 posing that a thimbleful does lie somewhere, that 

 a pheasant or two for whose accommodation the 

 country groans is displaced, is not the pleasure 

 of having the birds, and their grub-collecting all 

 day long, sufficient to outweigh it ? Is there nothing 

 to love and admire in these handsome, lively, friendly, 

 vivacious birds ? They do much good, little harm, 

 and none of that little to song-birds. Indeed they 

 are song-birds too, or very nearly. How pleasant 

 are their cheery, sing-talking voices ! How greatly 



