Destroying Vermin in small Gardens. 203 



must absolutely chase them away for good and all, otherwise 

 there will be no peace for your birds. A small quantity of 

 arsenic, about as much as the point of your penknife will con- 

 tain, rubbed into a bit of meat either cooked or raw, will do 

 their business effectually. 



" I have often thought of suggesting to the Board of Woods 

 and Forests the idea of feeding the birds, or rather of putting 

 down the different kinds of food proper for the different kinds of 

 of singing-birds, in Kensington Gardens." This would not be 

 necessary. All our soft-billed summer birds of passage, and 

 those soft-billed birds that remain with us the year throughout, 

 live on insects; and insects abound during the period when these 

 birds are in song. But if you could prevail upon the board to 

 prevent idle boys from chasing them, and gunners from killing 

 them, and bird-merchants from catching them, all would be right; 

 and almost every bush and tree would have its chorister. 



" If you could give any hints as to the next best quadruped 

 to the weasel for keeping in gardens, or, in fact, any thing 

 relative to keeping down insects, it would be of very great use." 

 — I know of no other quadruped. The barn owl is a great con- 

 sumer of slugs; and the lapwing will clear a garden of worms. 

 Our singing-birds are the best for destroying soft-winged insects. 

 The windhover hawk is excellent for killing beetles, and also for 

 consuming slugs and snails : cats dare not attack him, wherefore 

 he is very fit for a garden, and is very easy to be obtained, I 

 could send you a dozen any season. 



Were I now a writer in the Magazine of Natural History, I 

 would not agree with a Master Charles Coward in his paper on 

 " The carnivorous Propensities of the Squirrel." (See the Maga- 

 zine for 1839, p. 311.) And so this keen observer has found 

 out at last, that squirrels in confinement are occasionally carni- 

 vorous animals. Indeed ! And so are my hens in confine- 

 ment: they will kill and swallow a mouse in the twinkling of an 

 eye, and a tame parrot will perform the same feat. All our 

 granivorous birds in confinement will eat raw and cooked meat. 

 My black cat " Tom," which is fed and pampered by my sisters, 

 will often turn up his nose at a piece of good roasted mutton, and 

 immediately after will eat greedily of dry bread. What would you 

 think of me were I to write for you a paper in which I would state 

 that the cat is occasionally an animal that is very fond of bread ? 

 You cannot judge of the real habits of an animal when it is in 

 captivity. The want of exercise, the change of economy, the 

 change of food, and the change of habit altogether, tend wo- 

 fully to change the very nature of the stomach, and cause it to 

 accommodate itself to aliment which it would never touch in a wild 

 state. We see people out of health eating chalk ; and we see 

 others again, who spend their lives in sedentary employments, 



