In the Neighbourhood of Salisbury. 



155 



band, as I cannot find it in my heart to omit the mention of some 

 of our commonest ornithological friends, to whom the description 

 rarer certainly cannot be applied. Yet, kind reader, pardon me ; 

 for if of human beings this is true, so also is it of other bipeds, that 

 if we know the faults best of those we associate with the most, so 

 ought we also to be more intimately acquainted with their virtues — ■ 

 and these may not be omitted, although such qualities, in bird as 

 well as in our human friends, are often wont to be overlooked, if 

 their existence be not altogether denied, owing to the blind un- 

 charitableness of our fallen nature. 



Now of all our ornithological acquaintances, I am bold to say that 

 there are no truer friends to the human race than this oft -abused 

 trio, " the Rook, the Sparrow, and the Woodpigeon." Does not 

 the intuition of common sense tell us, that the commoner any bird 

 is, the greater function it must necessarily have to fulfil in this world 

 of ours ? For in creation nothing is too small or insignificant to 

 have escaped the minutest calculation and inscrutable wisdom of its 

 Almighty Creator, who orders all things in " measure and number 

 and weight " ; and woe be to the presumptuous hand which rashly 

 interferes with the finely ordered balance of Nature, and thinks to 

 better by its own short-sighted management the nicely adjusted 

 proportions of the Creator's handiwork. Doubtless that balance, 

 which once was perfect, has been rudely interfered with by the Fall 

 of Creation, through man's sin ; so that even as the ground has to 

 be tilled, ere it yields its perfect fruit, and cleared of thorn and 

 brier, so also in the animate races of creation, the good they were 

 originally formed to carry out, is counterbalanced by a certain pro- 

 portion of baneful influence as well, which has undesignedly (as far 

 as their original purpose in creation is concerned) crept in ; and this 

 has to be provided against by man's forethought and care. But yet 

 even as the ground is capable of administering, and does administer, 

 to man's blessing, under his careful tillage, and honest endeavour, 

 so may the irregularities of the bird-world be regulated and held in 

 check by the same qualities in creation's Lord and Master; so that 

 the evil they occasionally do may be largely counterbalanced by the 

 systematic good of which they are the source. At one time this 



VOL. XX. — NO. LIX. M 



