JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
VERMIN OF THE FARM. 
It is by no means easy to give such a definition of “ vermin ” 
as will satisfy everyone. The agriculturist is not necessarily a 
game preserver, and in that case his views will scarcely coincide 
with those of the sportsman, whose chief concern is with the 
amount of game he can rear for the pleasure of shooting it. 
He who farms only for profit on land over which the sporting 
rights are reserved will naturally care more for the protection of 
his own crops than for the protection of game ; and, indeed, if 
he considers the matter seriously, he will be indifferent to the 
presence on his farm of any so-called “ vermin ” so long as 
it is not destructive to agricultural produce. It follows that 
a list of vermin drawn up by the farmer will not coincide 
with that of the sportsman, and that man will have the longest 
list who farms his own land and reserves the shooting. 
The interpretation usually given by lexicographers to the 
word “vermin” is “any small obnoxious insect or animal;” 
and the form of the word, cognate with vermis^ a worm, suggests 
that the creatures so called are not only small, but creeping 
or crawling. Assuming this to have been the orignial signifi- 
cation of the word, it has come to be very widely extended, and 
at the present day is by many people deemed to include nearly 
all the smaller British mammals, from the harvest-mouse to the 
polecat (and even in some places the badger and the fox), as 
well as a great variety of so-called “ winged vermin,” such as 
crows, jays, magpies, hawks and owls. 
To determine which of all these merit the persecution 
VOL. in. T. s. — 10 p 
