30 BIED LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



lands ; and, in fact, nearly every one of those lesser birds 

 enshrined in poet's verses, or enbalmed in our rich and his- 

 toric folk lore, with which song or story has made us familiar. 

 Perhaps the finches of the underwood and the wild birds of 

 marsh and mountain top owe their immunity from extinction 

 to their shyness and retiring habits. The whitethroats might 

 be as scarce as bitterns were they equally noticeable ; but, as 

 matters stand, who cares to molest the former that delicate 

 little fragment of drab and cream-coloured feathers that 

 hunts in the nettle forests and hides its grass-built nest 

 amongst densest tangles of briar and bramble ? We might 

 have obliterated the ouzels, again, as we have the auks, had 

 they been half so valuable for food or so dull-witted as the 

 gare-fowl. This, and much more of the same kind, goes to 

 show that when left to their own devices Nature very rarely 

 suffers any species of bird or beast to be " wiped off the slate." 

 It is only when man, the lord and bully of creation, comes 

 upon the scene that the balance is disturbed; races and 

 species going down before his insatiable appetites and endless 

 vanities. It was not Nature, for instance, who did away with 

 the amiable but heavy dodo ; it was South Sea whalers, and 

 all for the poor reason of sharpening their sailor's knives upon 

 the stones his gizzard contained. The birds of paradise are 

 dying to deck the dresses of savage tribes, and humming- 

 birds to fringe fans and glitter on fair but thoughtless heads. 

 Penguin flesh was very good eating the cods-men of the 

 North Seas knew, and the fact was ruin to the species ; and 

 just so the buffalo is being recklessly converted into glue 

 and pelts for portmanteaus, until we are within measurable 

 distance of his extermination ; and the price of elephants and 

 elephant ivory going up every day, as they become scarcer 

 and scarcer in their Indian or African jungles. 



Nature retaliates, it might seem, by multiplying unduly 

 some smaller birds and beasts, not to mention lesser insect 

 plagues. But leaving locusts and larva out of the question, 

 even the naturalist must recognize sometimes that certain 



