302 OUT OF DOORS. 



home, after paying for the same, threw them out of the 

 vestry window into the road, whence they were thriftily 

 picked up by the expectant pensioners, and sold three 

 or four times over. The consequence has been that on 

 the Continent the insects have increased to such a fear- 

 ful extent that societies have been lately formed for the 

 express purpose of reintroducing the small birds that 

 were extirpated at such an expenditure of time and 

 money ; and guarding against their slaughter by cruel 

 little boys who take them out of their nests and murder 

 the fledglings with the refined barbarity of juvenile 

 civilisation, or by betasseled, green-clad, game-bag 

 carrying gunners, who ' pot ' them in the hedges and 

 consider themselves sportsmen. Yet the question has 

 been definitely settled more than twenty years ago, and 

 in the ' Home of a Naturalist ' sundry birds that have 

 long laboured under causeless obloquy have not only 

 been acquitted of all evil doings, but unexpectedly 

 received into the number of our friends. 



It will be at once seen that if any bird be attracted 

 by food and a quiet retreat it may be expelled by an 

 opposite mode of treatment, so that a knowledge of 

 habit enables us to attract or expel those birds which 

 we know by repeated observation to be our friends or 

 foes. The same maxim applies to quadrupeds, and is 

 often beyond all value. 



For example, the farmer is almost invariably keen 

 in hunting down and killing every weasel, stoat, or 

 polecat in the neighbourhood, and his barn walls are 



