The Zoologist— May, 1869. 1667 



and some of the strong sideribs : the plants look as if riddled by 

 caterpillars. The almost total loss of the Swede crop has probably 

 induced these birds to levy contributions on the cabbage-fields. The 

 increase during the last twenty-five years of this species in North 

 Lincolnshire is remarkable ; it is certainly not consequent on any in- 

 crease of plantations, or through waste land brought under cultivation, 

 little or no change in either respect having taken place ; their present 

 abundance is attributable, I fully believe, to one circumstance alone 

 —the all but total destruction of the falcons and hawks. When will 

 our game preservers, and their ignorant keepers, learn common sense, 

 and understand that falcons and hawks are not incompatible with 

 abundance of game .? The wood pigeon was the natural food of the 

 falcon, and much more likely to be stricken than either pheasant or 

 partridge. Now, thanks to the extermination of the birds of prey, the 

 ring dove— to say nothing of the injury done to the farmer — consumes 

 an immense amount of food which would otherwise go into the crop of 

 game birds. I have sometimes thought that in this district, at least, 

 where game is not as a rule artificially reared and fed, as the wood 

 pigeon increased the flying game has decreased : I know, too, that 

 late in the season, when birds are wild, that both in cover and turnip- 

 field the sudden rise of a flock of wood pigeon will disturb all the 

 game in the neighbourhood. Restore our falcons and harriers, and 

 we shall then probably not hear so much of that bane of the moor- 

 shooter— the dreaded grouse disease. I was much struck lately by 

 the remarks of a writer in one of the monthly magazines ;* speaking 

 of the grouse disease, he writes—" I still, however, most honestly 

 believe that the wholesale destruction of the birds of prey, especially 

 of the peregrine falcon, has been a great curse— not at all because 

 she prevented overstocking, for man can prevent that with his gun, 

 but from the circumstance that hawks take the weakly and diseased 

 birds first, simply because they can catch them easily. Nature knew 

 that, in her own course, diseases would come ; she knew also that, to 

 prevent them spreading, they must be stamped out ; and she sent 

 her falcons on the moors : her armed cruisers sailed out to sweep the 

 seas of the pirates that infested them; but man knew better— he looked 

 only at the good of the moment— he defied her laws, and broke her 

 balance altogether." And so, undoubtedly, in the case of the wood 

 pigeon. Man has destroyed the balance, not alone to the injury of 



* 'Sainl Paul's Magazine,' June, 1868, 



