THE GOLD-FIXCH. 59 



tuman art can fully extirpate, or keep extirpated, plants, the 

 seeds of which career over the country at nearly the same 

 rate with the winds, there are always gold-finches nestling in 

 the gardens and copses, and among the bushes, and even the 

 thick tufts of nettles on the lower grounds. But the gold- 

 finches do not inhabit the marshes, the naked leas, or corn- 

 fields that are free from composite and cruciferous weeds ; nor 

 do they give the preference to places near the margin of waters, 

 or otherwise, where insects may be presumed to be most 

 abundant. Hence, it is reasonable to conclude that the gold- 

 finch is more exclusively a seed-bird than any other bird of 

 the order, and perhaps it is entirely so ; but although its food 

 is vegetable, it does not eat the seeds of the grasses, or of 

 grain plants, though it does sometimes commit considerable 

 ravages upon those of the cruciferous plants, and also the 

 trefoils where these are cultivated. Its chief food, however, 

 consists of the seeds of plants which are equally injurious to- 

 corn-fields and to pastures ; and therefore it is one of those 

 birds which, altogether independently of its own beauty and 

 its song, claims the protection of the farmer, as one of the 

 grand natural conservators of the green carpet of the earth. 



One chosen habitat of the gold-finch is the line where the 

 cultivated fields meet the upland waste or the game preserves. 

 [The weeds disseminated from the latter, by the way, do even 

 more injury to the surrounding farms than the game birds do. J 

 That boundary is one at which there is a good deal of know- 

 ledge to be acquired ; and the more so, the greater the con- 

 trast between the territories which it divides. Some por- 

 tion of the tilth is blown by the winds of March upon the 

 margin of the wild, and along with a surface grass a little 

 more kindly, there comes a host of thistles and other plants 

 with winged seeds, which stand in battle array upon the fron- 

 tier, ready to invade the fields with legions of seeds, when- 

 ever the wind blows from the hill. Among the tops of these, 



