BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 63 



village from (strange to say) a bird-catcher by trade, 

 a man of a rather low type of countenance, and who 

 lived, when at home, in a London slum. On the 

 common where he spread his nets he had found, 

 he told me, about thirty nests containing eggs or 

 fledglings ; but this boy had gone over the ground 

 after him, and not many of the nests had escaped 

 his sharp eyes. 



I was satisfied that the young tits were quite safe, 

 so far as these youngsters were concerned, and only 

 regretted that they were such small boys, and that 

 the great nest-destroyer, whose evil deeds they spoke 

 of with an angry colour in their cheeks, was a very 

 strong boy, otherwise I should have advised them 

 to " go " for him. 



Oddly enough I heard of another boy who exer- 

 cised the same kind of cruelty and destructiveness 

 over another common a few miles distant. Walking 

 across it I spied two boys among the fur^e bushes, 

 and at the same moment they saw me, whereupon 

 one ran away and the other remained standing. 

 A nice little fellow of about eight, he looked as if 

 he had been crying. I asked him what it was all 

 about, and he then told me that the bigger boy who 

 had just run away was always on the common 

 searching for nests, just to destroy them and kill the 

 young birds ; that he, my informant, had come there 



