316 Nature's Militia 



— if not in the hedgerow, then in the garden ; and the 

 grub of the white butterfly is, as we all know, able to 

 make quite a decent living upon cabbage-leaves. 



That there should be trees and bushes, with their 

 usual undergrowth of wild plants, in the neighbourhood 

 of cultivated land is therefore a double advantage : the 

 grubs are supplied with food, and kept away from the 

 crops ; and the birds, the grubs' natural enemies, are 

 attracted, and keep down their numbers. 



But the larger the area of land cultivated, the smaller 

 the space left to nature ; the more fields, the fewer 

 thickets ; the fewer wild crops to feed the grubs, the 

 fewer nesting-places for the birds. And thus the mere 

 fact that more land had been taken into cultivation 

 would alone be enough to account, in some degree, for 

 the marked increase in the numbers of Germany's 

 insect enemies. 



But this was not all, or nearly all. Not only had the 

 grubs been driven into the fields, and the birds driven 

 out of them, but the latter had been killed wholesale. 

 Government keepers were actually under orders to 

 destroy the woodpeckers, whose special office it is to 

 rid the trees of beetle-grubs, and the cuckoos, which 

 devour the hairy caterpillars which no other birds will 

 touch, and so on. 



And the Germans have not been the only, or even 

 the chief, offenders. They have killed their own birds, 

 and have suffered for it. But the Italians have done 

 worse ; for they have waged deadly war upon the birds 

 which are the common property of Europe. They have 

 a perfect mania for slaughtering small, insect-eating 

 birds, and unhappily they have special opportunities of 

 gratifying it, as large flocks of migrants pass through 



