NEW WILD BIRDS’ PROTECTION ACT. 223 
and in some parts of Shropshire at this moment, the houses 
of the gentry and the farm-yards of the farmer, are plagued 
beyond endurance. The owl and the kestrel have been ruth- 
lessly slain in absolute ignorance of their feeding habits by the 
gamekeepers, and their destruction has been terribly revenged 
upon us. 
From the coast comes the same bitter complaint of destruc- 
tion of the great scavengers of our ports and harbours, the 
gulls. Feathers, we are told in the milliners’ papers, “ are all 
the vogue, and are to rival fur this year.” And to supply 
feathers, cowards are gunning all round the coast and slaying 
ruthlessly the very birds that the herring fisher wants to point 
his eyes to the herring-school, the very birds that the sanitary 
authorities want to keep their harbours sweet, and that the 
ploughman by the seaboard desires for his companion, to clear 
the new-turned glebe from slugs and worms. There would 
then seem to be need for us to make use of the Act that has 
been just passed, and need for the County Councils of England 
to avail themselves of all the help that experts can give them 
in scheduling the birds whose nests and eggs they think require 
the protection of the strong right arm of the law. 
It is at the nesting season that our friends the birds most 
mightily come to the help of man. It has been calculated after 
close observation, that a sparrow feeds its young thirty-six 
times an hour ; a red-start, twenty-three times in the hour ; a 
chaffinch, thirty-five times, mostly with green caterpillars ; a 
titmouse, sixteen times. A single pair of starlings will get rid 
of more than twelve thousand larv£E in four months. Almost 
all small birds eat one-sixth of their own weight in twenty-four 
hours. Their food is largely composed of our secret enemies. 
As for the rooks, pace per contra a gentleman who applied 
the other day to the \Vestmoreland County Council and 
asked them for legal advice on the question of the destruc- 
tion of rooks ; who in fact sought their help to defend his farm 
from the incursions of his neighbour’s rookery, and who stated 
that he thought they did his ripe corn ten shillings of damage 
daily ; it may be enough to state in their behalf, that they are 
the farmer’s surest ally against the wireworm, and that if they 
can get grubs they won’t take grain. Over and over again 
they have been shot upon fields of newly sown wheat, and their 
crops when examined have been shown to be filled with grubs 
and wireworms, and no seed has been found in them ; indeed 
it has been computed that a rookery of ten thousand birds 
devours upwards of two hundred tons of cockchafer grubs 
and wireworms in the breeding season. 
The rook has his faults : he is untidy ; sometimes in pulling 
out a good fat wireworm he pulls up a blade of wheat ; some- 
times in pulling up “ tormentil ” he roots up grass also ; he got 
very thirsty in one of the dry seasons a few years back and 
took to egg-stealing ; and he has in some parts of England 
