VOL. XIV.] OTHI^R SPECIES OF BIRDS IN KENT. 85 



wellnigh impossible for the one parish to have produced 

 anything hke the quantity, had all those entered under this 

 name been Carrion-Crows. All three species are differentiated 

 here and there; but in the large majority of entries they are, I 

 think, not. This uncertainty is unfortunate, for an indication 

 of the former status of the Carrion-Crow in the Weald would 

 have been welcome. We must guess, I think, that it must at 

 any rate have been tolerably common, though certainly for 

 very many years it has been and still is quite a rarity. The- 

 others were evidently exceedingly numerous, especially the 

 Magpie, whose wonderful powers of multiplication in the same 

 district the last five years have made evident. 



The killing down of these birds as revealed in the accounts 

 was at first sight curiously spasmodic, but it is fairly evident,. 

 I think, that from time to time they must have become unduly 

 numerous, and then a determined effort was made to thin them 

 out. No mention at all is made of them in the first three years, 

 and then occurs a single entry for 79 heads : — 

 1629-30. 



Itm pd to James Philcote for the heads of 79 rookes & 



pyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiijd.. 



The next entries do not occur until eleven years later, when 

 a total of 196 were paid for : — • 

 1 641-2. 



Ttm to Edward Yonge's boye for a 160 Rookes heads . . 014 

 Itm to Joel Burges his boye for 36 Crowes heads . . 006- 



In 1644-5 and 1648-9 to 1653-4 the payments are all entered 

 in a lump sum as for " vermin," so no information is available 

 for these particular years, but there is no mention of any of 

 them in the intervening ones, and none is entered again till 

 1654-5, when 68 Crows were paid for. In 1655-6 the reward 

 paid, hitherto twopence a dozen, was increased to threepence, 

 and though only 36 Crows and Magpies were paid for in this 

 year, the increase evidently had some effect, for in the next 

 420 were accounted for, and in the year following 96 Rooks, 

 470 Crows and 90 Magpies. This effort was continued for 

 another two years, and then a period of slackness set in, which 

 included several years in which none was paid for at all, and 

 which lasted to the commer.cement of the long and determined 

 vermin campaign, already referred to [antea, p. 34), that began: 

 in i()j6-y. During the ten years 1680-81 to 1689-90, when 

 this was at its height, a total of 8,557 heads were paid for, with 

 maxima in the last two years of 1,249 ^^^ 1,296 respectively/ 

 By 1691-2 either the Crows and Magpies had become so 

 reduced that it was worth no one's while to collect them, or 



