76 THE NATURAL ENEMIES OF GAME 



beneficial birds can be released and the worst species 

 destroyed. 



Mr. Owen Jones, gamekeeper, also refers several times 

 to the growing sentiment in favor of the idea that vermin 

 should not be too closely controlled. 



"I regret to say," he observes, "that the last surviving 

 pair of magpies in the locality where I was keepering 

 were picked up by a keeper (not myself). Utterly to 

 exterminate birds so handsome may save a trifle of game 

 for the gun, but surely such extremes of preservation can 

 only bring upon the perpetrators the derision and dis- 

 gust of all sane people. A judicious thinning of hawks 

 and magpies is quite enough to satisfy the demands of 

 any sportsman, and their extinction is bound to react to 

 the detriment of the selfish few." 



Mr. Jones makes a good point in favor of the egg 

 stealing jay. No sane keeper, he says, would wish to be 

 without a sprinkling of jays in his woods, for he has no 

 more vigilant and useful sentinels. In a wood where 

 there are jays, neither cat, nor fox, nor man, can stir 

 without being spotted and proclaimed. Jays also take a 

 somewhat uncalled for delight in mobbing a barn owl 

 should it get abroad in the day time. 



Although Mr. Jones lost hundreds of eggs every year 

 by rooks, and little pheasants on the rearing field had to 

 be guarded constantly, he does not favor the extirpation 

 of the rook. "I love as much as anybody," he says, "their 

 cawing at the coming of Spring when the daisies open 

 wide." Mr. Jones also says: "Reviewing the vermin 

 question as a whole — that is, first, What vermin prey 

 largely on game? and, second. What creatures prey on 

 it only occasionally ?-^I admit that there is much room 



