4 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
salesmen, hawkers, &c, and to these we may add the large 'number 
of railway employees engaged in the transfer. 
On all hands we are told that our fish supply could be increased 
if the fisheries were worked on more scientific principles ; in short, 
if we knew more of the numerous scientific problems affecting them. 
With respect to the importance of agriculture little need be said. 
" I have always regarded agriculture (in its widest sense)," says the 
Right Hon. Jesse Collings,* " as the chief national concern, and as 
the only basis on which the real welfare of a country can be securely 
established. If we have purchased commercial supremacy^ at the 
cost of a permanent decay of that great industry, we have bought 
it at a ruinous price." 
The probable extension of cereal cultivation in the near future 
and also that of fruit cultivation, in addition to a large increase in 
small farms and small holdings, will increase our rural population 
greatly, so that once again we shall see agriculture taking its proper 
place amongst the industries of this country, and any factor that 
makes it difficult to cultivate this or that crop at a profit will have 
to be more carefully inquired into than in the past. 
We are already told that economic forces will compel thousands 
of women to enter the fields of agriculture and horticulture at no 
distant date, and anything that handicaps the large grower will tell 
with double force against those in a smaller way, and, in most cases, 
with but small capital. 
The question therefore arises, " How does the subject of the feeding 
habits of wild birds affect these great national industries ? " It 
affects them in three ways, viz. : — 
1. In that many species are protected which are distinctly injurious, 
and as a consequence hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of food 
is destroyed by them annually. 
2. That many species which are beneficial are destroyed, and so 
vermin, upon which they largely subsist, exact an enormous toll upon 
the produce of the land. 
3. There are a number of species with reference to which we yet 
require much more detailed information before it can be decided to 
which class they belong. 
With reference to the first class, there is now a considerable mass 
of evidence, much of which is founded upon careful scientific investi- 
gation. Take, for instance, the case of the rook and the starling. 
Gilmour in 1896 examined the stomach contents of 355 rooks ; Thring 
in 1910, 141 ; Florence in 1912, 162 ; and the writer 689. Here we 
have a total, from all parts of the country, of 1,347, tne cumulative 
evidence from which goes to show that of recent years there has been 
a large increase in the numbers of this bird, and with the present large 
number a grain diet is preferred. 
Respecting the starling, we have witnessed an enormous increase 
during the past twelve or thirteen years, due partly to migration 
and partly to the protection afforded it. As the result of an extended 
* Land Reform, London, "1906, p. x. 
