184 BIRD LIFE IN ENGLAND. 



should shoot a bird or two when they seem to have been 

 doing the greatest mischief, and make an examination into 

 the uncontrovertible evidence of their crops. The revelation 

 will, I venture to think, be instructive. There is a passage 

 in Mr. St. John's "Sketches of the Highlands " well illus- 

 trating this. He writes 



" An agricultural friend of mine pointed out to me the 

 other day an immense flock of wood pigeons busily at work 

 in a field of clover which had been under barley the last 

 season. ' There,' he said, ' you constantly tell me every bird 

 does more good than harm ; what good are those birds doing 

 to my young clover ? ' On this, in furtherance of my 

 favourite axiom that every wild animal is of some service 

 to man, I determined to shoot some of the birds to see what 

 they were actually feeding upon, for I did not at all fall in 

 with my friend's idea that they were gorging upon his 

 clover. 



" By watching in their line of flight from the field to the 

 woods, and sending a man round to drive them off the 

 clover, I managed to kill eight of the birds as they flew over 

 my head. I took them to his house and we opened their 

 crops to see what they contained. Every pigeon's crop was 

 as full as it could possibly be of two of the worst weeds in 

 the country, the wild mustard (' charlock ') and the ragweed, 

 which they had found remaining on the ground, these plants 

 ripening and dropping their seeds before the corn is cut. 



" Then no amount of human labour and research could 

 collect on the same ground, at that time of year, even as 

 much of these seeds as was consumed by each of these five 

 or six hundred wood pigeons daily for five or six weeks 

 together." 



The above well indicates the importance of condemning 

 no bird on appearances. Without such practical evidence 

 the farmer would pay a boy daily to scare away the doves, 

 would pay again to hoe out the charlock and ragweed before 

 burning it, and lose once more at harvest by a " dirty " 



