162 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



Chancery, has more than one claimant to it — 

 sometimes the claimants are many — and so long 

 as the dispute lasts all live out of the estate. For 

 there are always two or more species subsisting 

 on the same kind of food, possessing similar 

 habits, and frequenting the same localities. It is 

 consequently impossible for man to exterminate 

 any one species without indirectly benefiting some 

 other species, which attracts him in a less degree, 

 or not at all. This is unfortunate, for as the 

 bright kinds, or those we esteem most, diminish 

 in numbers the less interesting kinds multiply, and 

 we lose much of the pleasure which bird life is 

 fitted to give us. When we visit woods, or other 

 places to which birds chiefly resort, in districts 

 uninhabited by man, or where he pays little or 

 no attention to the feathered creatures, the variety 

 of the bird life encountered affords a new and 

 peculiar delight. There is a constant succession 

 of new forms and new voices; in a single day as 

 many species may be met with as one would find 

 in England by searching diligently for a whole 

 year. 



And yet this may happen in a district possessing 

 no more species than England boasts; and the 



