BITIJDS IN A VILLAGE. 
55 
trade, a man of a rather low type of countenance, 
and who lived, when at home, in a London slum. 
On the common where he spread his nets he had 
found, he told me, about thirty nests containing 
eggs or fledglings; but this boy had gone over the 
ground after him, and not many of the nests had 
escaped his sharp eyes. 
I was satisfied that the young tits were quite 
safe, so far as these youngsters were concerned, and 
only regretted that they were such small boys, and 
that the great nest-destroyer, whose evil deeds they 
spoke of with an angry colour in their cheeks, was 
a very strong boy, otherwise I should have advised 
them to " go for " him. 
All those birds that had finished rearing their 
young by the sixteenth of June were fortunate, for 
on the morning of that day a great and continuous 
shouting, with gun-firing, banging on old brass and 
iron utensils, with various other loud, unusual 
noises, were heard at one extremity of the village, 
and continued with occasional quiet intervals until 
evening. This tempest of rude sounds spread from 
day to day, until the entire area of the village and 
the surrounding orchards was involved, and the 
poor birds that were tied to the spots where their 
treasures were must have existed in a state of 
constant trepidation. For now the cherries were 
fast ripening, and the fruit- eating birds, especially 
