THE KITE 
** Kites that swim sublime 
In still repeated circle, screaming loud.” 
HE kite furnishes a good example of what 
political economists call “place value.” A 
kite nestling found in England will sell for 
425, while in India the bird will not fetch 
even the price of the biblical sparrow. It was not ever 
thus. Time was when the kite was as common in the 
United Kingdom as it now is in India. Kites of a 
species (Mz/vus ictinus) nearly allied to the Indian bird 
used to exist in London in their thousands in the 
“good old days” when the conservancy arrangements 
were such that the streets offered plenty of food for 
catrion-feeders, 
As civilization and sanitation advanced, the kites 
found that refuse, which is their ordinary food, was 
growing beautifully less, hence they had to resort 
largely to the farmyard and the game-preserve to sup- 
plement their more normal diet—a change of habit not 
welcomed by farmers and gamekeepers, who then began 
to shoot at sight every kite that came within range. 
Thus the species grew scarce. And when once this 
happens in England the end of that species is not 
far off. 
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