The Story-Book of the Fields 



your hands it rarely meets with mercy : you 

 keep on complaining, and while they are all 

 working to defend you, you treat them as 

 accursed. Poor blind and foolish murderers ! 

 Birds that devour insects are of tremen- 

 dous assistance in agriculture. They share 

 the work among them in fields, hedges, 

 gardens and orchards, and wage continual 

 war against every kind of vermin — that 

 terrible brood that would destroy the crops 

 if others beside ourselves did not keep an 

 untiring watch ; others more skilful, with 

 keener sight and more patience, and with no 

 other occupation. It is no exaggeration to 

 say that if it were not for the insect-eating 

 birds we should be decimated by famine. 

 Who but a destructive idiot would dare to 

 touch the nests of the birds that enliven 

 the country with their song, and protect us 

 from the plague of the devouring insect ? 

 But there are savage boys who, if they can 

 manage to miss school, weary of books and 

 lessons, take a delight in climbing trees and 

 searching hedges, to steal the eggs, which are 

 pitifully broken, and the poor little dying 

 nestlings. Let us hope that the game-keeper 

 will catch these rascals, and that they may 

 experience all the severity of the law, so that, 



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