266 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



tell us that in the absence of birds the earth would be 

 quite uninhabitable in six years. Certain it is that, as 

 things are at present, the vegetation of the earth depends 

 on birds. The grass of the meadow would soon be gone 

 if birds did not thin the grubs in the winter and the spring. 

 The trees of the woods would not long remain if the birds 

 did not clean off the injurious insects. The small rodents, 

 such as mice, popularly called vermin, are in many places 

 bad enough as it is, but the hawks and owls save us from 

 plagues. No one can deny that bullfinches destroy fruit- 

 buds, that wood-pigeons devour large quantities of grain, 

 that sparrow-hawks destroy many useful birds, that 

 sparrows introduced into the States have been a national 

 curse, and so on ; but these are quite exceptional instances. 

 Even if we adhere to a somewhat narrow anthropocentric 

 position, the balance of beneficence in favour of aU but a 

 few birds is overwhelmingly great. And it is absurd to 

 suppose that Man, like a spoiled child of the Universe, 

 should have everything made smooth for him, and should 

 have no taxes to pay for his continual interference with the 

 established order of things. 



Prof. Alfred Newton once drew a vivid picture of the 

 desolation likely to be wrought by man's carelessness in 

 disturbing the balance of Nature — alike by introduction 

 and extermination. 



' What it a future Challenger shall report of some island, 

 now known to possess a rich and varied animal population, 

 that its present fauna had disappeared, that its only mam- 

 mals were feral pigs, goats, rats and rabbits — with an infusion 

 of ferrets, introduced by a zealous " accUmatizer " to check 

 the abundance of the rodents last named, but contenting 

 themselves with the colonists' chickens, that sparrows 



