41 6 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 



known to visit the Island, where there are now seventeen nests 

 in all, the highest being about fifteen feet from the ground, 

 while the lowest is only about five feet high. Some young 

 birds are hatched, and there are still some of the parent birds 

 sitting on their eggs. It is not singular that Books should 

 build on low trees, for they have been known to build on pollard 

 willows, on small apple trees, and in rough hedges and in bushes, 

 as related in Stevenson's "Birds of Norfolk," and in Yarrell's 

 "British Birds;" but they must have been hard pressed when 

 they chose a place like Holy Island for a residence. The 

 presence of the Books there has reminded me that in the church- 

 yard on Holy Island rest the remains of the late Mr. Bobert 

 Crossman, of Cheswick, who would never allow his Bookery to 

 be disturbed in any way, and Sir William Crossman informs me 

 that the Books continue to increase unmolested. 



Mr. George Bolam, of Berwick, on whose unbiassed judgment 

 we may confidently rely, has, through the medium of the daily 

 press, been educating the public on the habits of the Books, 

 and although he does not attempt to conceal the fact that they 

 have, in some parts of the county, become a nuisance in rooting 

 up wheat and other grain in a sprouting state, he adduces much 

 evidence in their favour, and proves that much of the prejudice 

 against the birds is unmerited. Mr. Bolam shows that the 

 amount of service they render to the farmer is very considerable 

 indeed, but that the diet of the Book is varied in the extreme, 

 and scarcely anything, animal or vegetable, comes amiss to it. 

 At seed time a good deal of corn is eaten, though should the 

 harrows or the ploughshare leave a grub or a wire-worm ex- 

 posed, it is at once pounced upon and gobbled up in preference 

 to the grain. In a paper on "Books and Bookeries," by Mr. 

 James Sniail, published in the Broceedings of the Berwickshire 

 Naturalists' Club for 1882, it is related how Mr. Wilson, of 

 Cleughhead, sowed a field with barley close to his house. The 

 Books settled on the field in great numbers, and he requested 

 his landlord's gamekeeper to shoot them. He accordingly killed 

 two, and he and Mr. Wilson opened their crops on the spot. 

 One grain was found in one and three in the other, but both 



