CHAP. X BIRD POPULATION 295 
population. There are probably as many birds, when 
all told, in the British Isles as there were in the last 
century. Cultivation supplies them with abundance 
of food almost everywhere, and if you wish to find 
the greatest possible number of birds’ nest in a day, 
there is no better place to search than a garden. 
There are far more small birds there than in a big 
forest, or an open moor. In a day’s walk in Suther- 
landshire you may see nothing but some Grouse, a 
Raven or so, a Buzzard, and perhaps an Eagle. A 
rickyard simply swarms with birds. The preservation 
of game has led also to a preservation of Warblers. 
They are saved from birds’-nesters, and Hawks are 
kept down. Now that Scotch firs and larches are 
common trees, we have more Golden-crested Wrens. 
With the spread of plantations the Robin and the 
Blackbird have extended their range further north. 
The Missel Thrush is now found as far north as 
Caithness, and though unknown in Ireland before 
1800 is now common there, even as far west as 
Connemara. In Scotland Chaffinches are on the 
increase, and in many parts Starlings, never seen 
some forty years back, are now familiar birds. 
The Peewit, whose nests grow rarer and rarer in 
England, breeds in greater numbers than formerly 
in the north of Scotland. The conditions, in short, 
have changed, and under the new conditions some 
kinds thrive and multiply, others dwindle and vanish. 
But new species do not come to us, except in very 
rare cases, to replace those that pass away, the 
tendency of civilization being to reduce more and 
more the amount of variety upon the earth. There is 
