136 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE 



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 con- 

 stant succession of new forms and new voices ; in a 

 single day as many spedes 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 

 actual number of individuals may be even less than 

 with us. In sparrows, for instance, of the one 

 common species, we are exceedingly rich ; but 

 in bird life generally, in variety of birds, especially 

 in those of graceful forms and beautiful plumage, 

 we have been growing poorer for the last fifty years, 

 and have now come to so low a state that it becomes 



