1877.] 
The Balance of Nature. 
155 
on the contrary, maintains that — “ It is a great mistake to 
suppose that man drives away birds by cultivating the sur- 
face of the earth. He feeds hundreds in feeding himself, 
and they are infinitely more numerous in our gardens and 
on our farms than in the primeval forest where his foot 
never penetrates, or on the great fertile plains where he has 
not yet turned the earth.” To this passage we shall have 
occasion to return. He seems indignant at the statement 
of naturalists that “ gamekeepers are ignorant and cruel, 
and do more harm than good.” He asserts that “ the sorts 
of birds they (gamekeepers) kill can be counted on their 
fingers and their numbers in scores, whilst the sorts of birds 
they protect are counted by hundreds and their numbers by 
tens of thousands.” The case mentioned by Mr. Stevenson 
before the Committee, of a Norfolk gamekeeper who said 
that he shot the nightingales and took their eggs lest they 
should disturb his pheasants in the night, Mr. Morant dis- 
poses of by the clever surmise that the keeper might be 
amusing himself at the expense of his listener ! 
Whom, then, ought we to believe ? Mr. Morant and the 
“ game-preservers,” or Waterton and the “ bird-preservers ?” 
Now though, as we have already mentioned, we have little 
faith in Waterton in matters of inference or of generalisa- 
tion, in a question of diredt observation we doubt if he has 
ever been found mistaken. He was himself a country gen- 
tleman and a sportsman, and certainly would not have de- 
nounced the gamekeepers as he did without sufficient reason. 
Our own observations fully confirm what he has advanced. 
Many a time have we grieved to see not merely hawks, 
magpies, crows, and jays, but owls, woodpeckers, goat- 
suckers, and birds of many other kinds, nailed up against 
the gable end of a keeper’s lodge. Of our own knowledge 
we endorse the remark of one of the gentlemen examined 
before the Committee, that st an average gamekeeper kills 
everything as vermin except what is in the game list.” 
They suspedt all animated nature of harbouring designs 
against their pheasants or “ birds,” and where there is the 
shadow of a doubt they adt as if there was convidtive evi- 
dence. An enlightened employer may sometimes attempt 
to restrain their mischievous zeal, but behind his back the 
havoc will go on. We have lately read an instance of a 
keeper who, when rebuked by his master for having shot a 
goatsucker, and told that the bird was perfectly harmless, 
replied “ Well, sir, but it’s a narsty flopping thing.”* As 
* See Science Gossip, iii. , 17, and v., 179. 
