124 THE ZOOLOGIST. — 
were all that came under my cognizance. Wood-Pigeons have also 
been scarce, and fortunately so, from a farmer’s point of view. 
Another scarcely less harmful bird, in spite of all which 
sentimentalists may say about it, is the House-Sparrow, which 
is a parasite to man more than any other wild bird which 
exists. Spasmodic attempts to keep it down have lately been 
made in Norfolk by the formation of Sparrow clubs—to wit, a 
combination of farmers, who undertake to destroy them by 
netting and taking their nests. The parish in which I reside 
and nine others adjoining thus combined, and paid for the twelve 
months ending Nov. 380th premiums on 11,488 Sparrows and 
4772 nestlings and eggs, but even these measures are only 
partially effective. The Sparrow is too firmly rooted in all the 
cultivatable parts of England to be turned out, but the idea that 
migrants come to us over the North Sea is untenable. 
As a set-off to the destructiveness of the Sparrow and the 
Wood-Pigeon—and, I am afraid, we must add the Rook—the 
ornithologist can point to the benefits conferred on man by the 
Barn-Owl, or White Owl, as it is termed, of which a striking in- 
stance will be mentioned presently. The Owl is one of the 
seven birds which receive throughout the administrative county 
of Norfolk a so-called protection by order of our County Council 
during the whole of the year, but if the word ‘“‘ Owl” is to be 
understood in a generic sense, I fear the law here is little better 
than a dead letter. There is one engine of destruction, the pole- 
trap, which used to kill all comers—Owls, Hawks, Cuckoos, 
Woodpeckers, &c.—but this, having become illegal in 1904, is 
much less used than formerly, although there are still several 
gamekeepers who employ it, being unaware that they are thereby 
rendering themselves liable to a fine of forty shillings. 
The Migration of Nutcrackers. — With regard to the Nut- 
crackers, the migration was far from being confined to England ; 
in fact, we only received the fringe of what was a very widespread 
movement, reaching all over Germany and into France. If they 
all belonged to the Siberian race they must have come a long 
distance. In addition to the two Norfolk examples, one was 
taken in Suffolk, one in Bucks, and one in Sussex. All these 
are considered to have been the slender-billed Nucifraga macro- 
rhynchus. The ‘ Revue Francaise d’Ornithologie ’ records a good 
