" We tola you so!' 115 



if you mean to have any ; if you don't protect them, 

 depend upon it you won't have any, because the birds 

 do not understand equity, but only their own tastes 

 and appetites. (If they only took a fair share in 

 exchange for their killing of grubs and insects and 

 worms, I should be the last to grudge it to them ; but 

 while your fine fruit lasts they won't touch aught else !) 

 I have sat for hours and watched the efforts of birds to 

 remove nettings, and have seen blackbirds, thrushes, 

 and starlings all labour for half-hours at a time to clear 

 away or scrape off earth tunnel-wise, so that they might 

 enter beneath the net or wire fencing, and, having in 

 some cases succeeded, so exactly have they taken a 

 note of the hole they made, that when you tried to 

 catch them, they flew as direct for it, from the farthest 

 corner of the covered space to which they had enticed 

 you, as a bee-line, and were through as by magic, and 

 off, to your great chagrin. And all this before full 

 sunrise. I cannot, therefore, bird-lover as I am, give 

 quite the same report on this point as Mr. J. G. Wood, 

 because, being often " up in the morning early," I have 

 sat and watched their persevering application and their 

 ingenious devices to outwit you and to eat your choicest 

 fruit; and I have paid dearly for not listening to warnings 

 of gardeners and neighbours of a practical turn of mind 

 who have over and over again looked at my bare beds 

 and my cherry trees with bare stones that rattled on 

 each other gently in the wind, with a sardonic smile, 

 which meant " We told you so." 



Go'ethe has a very fine parable in its way, based on 

 his experiences, when as a youngster he planted a 

 fruit tree, and from day to day watched its progress, 

 to be ever and anon depressed at the inroads of in- 

 sects, blight, birds, and what not, finally to congratulate 



