DESTRUCTION OF HAWKS AND OWLS. 
3 
under the most favourable conditions, seeds of wheat fail to 
germinate three or four years after they have been harvested. 
This has been frequently tested, and is a fact that cannot be 
called in question. 
But it is said that, considering the exceptional conditions 
under which tlie mummy wheat has been conserved, the vitality 
of some of the grains may have been retained. On the contrary, 
a further change has taken place in all seeds and fruits which 
come down to us in the coffins of ancient Egypt. They all 
appear as if they had come through the fire. The investing 
covering has not prevented the action of the oxygen of the air 
on the substance of the human body enclosed, nor on the seeds 
or fruits wrapped up with it. Not only has the embryo been 
dried up and killed, but the whole substance of the seed or 
fruit has been slowl)^ oxidised, more or less burnt. The sinews 
and muscles of the dead body are hard and brittle, like the 
grains of wheat. It would be no greater wonder to see the 
hardened and eviscerated mummy, under favourable treatment, 
rise up and walk, than to see the grains found in its cerements 
germinate. 
William Carruthers. 
THE DESTRUCTION OF HAWKS AND OWLS. 
N the summer of this year I was sitting at the dinner- 
jjW table in one of the health resorts in the north of 
England, when my neighbour remarked, “ What I 
miss most here are those beautiful kestrels I used to see 
daily, hovering over the wooded glen in which the river flows.” 
“ Oh,” I replied, “ I can tell you where your kestrels are now : 
I saw them to-day, to the number of about a dozen, nailed by 
the head in the keeper’s museum near the moor side.” This 
conversation took place within a few miles, as the crow flies, of 
districts in Southern Scotland recently devastated by the plague 
of short-tailed field voles, when an area of hill pasture, not less 
than twenty miles in length and from ten to twenty in breadth, 
was rendered practically useless for grazing purposes. 
The exhaustive Report, published in 1893, of the Commission 
appointed by the Board of Agriculture to investigate the circum- 
stances, dwells specially on the services rendered by hawks and 
owls in mitigating the plague and assisting in clearing off the 
devastating rodents. The conclusions arrived at by the Com- 
mittee were made known and commented upon by the press, and 
circulated through the length and breadth of the land ; and it 
seems well-nigh incredible that, notwithstanding the evidence 
brought out in the report, the owners of shooting and game 
preserves, even in the immediate neighbourhood of the vole- 
ravaged districts, should continue to permit their keepers to 
