FINCHES. 21 



Legislation lias already and wisely confounded the bitterest 

 antagonists of grub-eating small birds by affording them 

 protection during their breeding season from the 1st of April 

 to the end of August, but even this brand new protection 

 may be endangered unless those who are mostly interested 

 exercise a wise spirit of investigation and caution in hearing 

 the carpings of certain critics so remorselessly dissatisfied that 

 surely they will find fault with the municipal arrangements 

 of Paradise if they are ever in a position to speak practically 

 of them. Only the other day an indignant and no doubt well- 

 meaning farmer rose at a local meeting and deduced from a 

 tome of calculations he had made that small birds had in one 

 season eaten grain in England to the value of nearly 770,000. 

 What could be more shocking than such a consideration with 

 wheaten loaves at sixpence the quartern ? On the face of it, 

 it would seem to justify her Majesty and her peers, spiritual 

 and temporal, in forthwith ordering the complete and effectual 

 extermination of every thrush or finch in the land. Thus 

 Frederic the Great declared war against the sparrows, because 

 they were too fond of the cherries for which he also had a 

 weakness. The sparrows disappeared, and within two years 

 the cherries followed. Not long ago in one department of 

 France, where every citizen loves la chasse, and the small 

 birds find it difficult to hold their own, the loss on wheat 

 from the raids of insects during one twelve months was no 

 less than 160,000. This is the reverse of the matter, and 

 serves to show, if it shows nothing else, how wide are the 

 differences between the contending parties. 



In general the happy mean lies between the two extremes. 

 There is a balance in Nature which cannot be kept too clearly 

 in sight. The great Mother knows best the mechanisms of 

 her own establishments. This is why, perhaps, hawks lay 

 but one egg to every two or three the birds they prey on 

 hatch ; and why rabbits and mice, the most universally perse- 

 cuted of rodents, are amazingly prolific. 



If legal protection is afforded to grain- eating species, 



