204 THE BOOK OF BIRDS 



remember when the Goldfinch was common in Berkshire, 

 and flocks of young birds were to be found in autumn in 

 places where a Goldfinch has probably not been seen for 

 the last twenty years." 



Less than fifty years ago, the fields round the town of 

 Worthing, in Sussex, yielded no less than 13,000 Gold- 

 finches every year to the nets spread for them. And Mr. 

 Charles Dixon tells us that the late Henry Swaysland 

 assured him, many years ago, that when a boy he could 

 take as many as five hundred of these Finches in a single 

 morning. Mr. Dixon was told, too, "by an experienced 

 bird-catcher, that forty years ago, in South Devon, the 

 Goldfinch bred in almost every orchard ; whereas now it 

 is one of the rarest birds in the county." It is pitiful to 

 compare the " very abundant " of naturalists who lived in 

 our grandfathers' days, with the "growing more rare every 

 year " of present-day writers. 



This change is chiefly but not entirely due to the bird- 

 catchers. It is also traceable, to some extent, to the 

 changes in the land. 



You may remember how Charles Kingsley, in one of his 

 Frose Idylls, deplores the passing away of the beautiful 

 birds which once had their home in the Great Fen. That 

 vast tract of country in Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, 

 once a dreary swamp with tall reeds and rushes and alders, 

 has almost all been drained, and the wading birds that 

 loved it have well-nigh all gone. The same sort of fate 

 has overtaken the wild birds which made their home in 

 the waste lands where furze and ragwort, thistles and 

 nettles bloomed and seeded year after year, without inter- 

 ference from man. 



Those waste places, where grew great clumps of thistles, 

 three and four feet high, with handsome purple heads fast 



