58 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
live in the woods and are of no advantao-e to the 
garden, swarm into it as the fruit ripens, and that 
it is only by a liberal use of nets that any reason- 
able portion of the fruit can be saved. 
He answered that with regard to the last point 
he did not quite agree with Mr. Witherspoon ; 
for here was this long strip of gardens and 
orchards placed alongside of an extensive wood 
that swarmed with birds, yet they got as much 
fruit from their trees as others did who had no 
woods near them. His way of looking at it was 
this. In the fruit season, which lasts only a few 
weeks, you are bound to suffer from the attacks 
of birds, whether they are your own birds only 
or your own combined with others from outside, 
unless you keep them off ; that those who do not 
keep them off are foolish or indolent, and deserve 
to suffer. The fruit season was, he said, always an 
anxious time. 
In conclusion, I remarked that the means used 
for protecting the fruit, whether they served their 
purpose well or not, struck me as being very un- 
worthy of the times we lived in, and seemed to 
show that the British fruit-growers, who were 
ahead of the world in all other matters connected 
with their vocation, had quite neglected this one 
point. A thousand years ago cultivators of the 
soil were scaring the birds from their crops just 
