14 THE LAND'S END 



all the year round as he is so common a town bird all 

 over the country, but at St. Ives many of the cliff- 

 breeding daws settle down regularly for the winter 

 and exist very comfortably on the fish and other 

 refuse thrown into the streets. Very soon I estab- 

 lished a sort of friendship with a few of these birds ; 

 for birds I must have, in town or country free birds 

 I mean, as the captive bird only makes me melancholy 

 and in winter I feed them whether they are in want or 

 not. It is an old habit of mine, first practised in early 

 life in June and July, the cold winter months in the 

 southern hemisphere, in a land where the English 

 sparrow was not. Now, unhappily, he is there and a 

 great deal too abundant. I fed a better sparrow in 

 those vanished days, smaller and more prettily shaped 

 than our bird, with a small crest on his head and a 

 sweet delicate little song. But in England one really 

 gets far more pleasure from feeding the birds on 

 account of the number of different species which are 

 willing to be our pensioners. At St. Ives I first 

 stayed at a house in The Terrace facing the sea- front, 

 and there were no gardens there, so that I had to feed 

 them out in the road. First there were only sparrows, 

 then a pair of jackdaws turned up, and soon others 

 joined them until I had about a score of them. By 

 and by a very big shaggy sheep-dog, belonging to a 

 carter, discovered that there was food to be got at 

 eight o'clock at that spot in the road, and he too 

 came very punctually every day and thoughtlessly 

 gobbled it all up himself. After two or three days of 

 this sort of thing, I felt that it ought not to be allowed 



