158 
The Balance of Nature. 
[April, 
upon extermination. But is it not almost preposterous to 
ascribe this change to the depreciations of species which are 
themselves on the wane ? Should we attribute, e.g., a de- 
crease of game in any district to poachers if these worthies 
were all the while becoming scarcer and scarcer ? 
The causes to which we should ascribe the decrease of 
ornamental and useful birds are many, but they may all be 
traced to man rather than to hawks, eagles, or crows. 
Foremost comes, as we have already maintained, the game- 
keeper. Mr. Morant, in seeking to deny that this “ assassin 
in velveteen ” shoots down anything but predatory birds, 
reminds us of Waterton when maintaining that serpents 
never aCt on the aggressive. Each of them is trying to 
prove a negative which one affirmative instance to the con- 
trary must at once overturn. Mr. Morant, when surveying 
Nature, seems to have a pheasant’s egg before one eye and 
that of a partridge before the other, and views all pheno- 
mena through this very perplexing medium. 
We might even ask, with Waterton, whether the very 
game birds themselves do not suffer quite as much from 
their official protestors as from their natural enemies ? In 
his Essay on the Carrion Crow, Waterton remarks — “ This 
man probably never reflects that in his rambles to find the 
nests of the birds he has made a track which will often be 
followed up by the cat, the fox, and the weasel, to the dire- 
ful cost of the sitting birds ; and moreover, that by his own 
obtrusive and unexpected presence in a place which ought 
to be free from every kind of inspection, whether of man or 
beast, he has driven the bird precipitately from her nest, by 
which means the eggs remain uncovered. Now the carrion 
crow, sweeping up and down in quest of food, takes advan- 
tage of this enforced absence of the bird from her uncovered 
eggs, and pounces upon them. Had there been no officious 
prying on the part of the keeper, it is very probable that the 
game would have hatched its brood in safety, even in the 
immediate vicinity of the carrion crow’s nest, — for instinCt 
never fails to teach the sitting bird what to do. Thus in the 
wild state, when wearied nature calls for relaxation, the 
pheasant first covers her eggs, and then takes wing direCtly 
without running from the nest. I once witnessed this, and 
concluded that it was a general thing. From my sitting- 
room in the attic storey of the house I saw a pheasant fly 
from her nest in the grass, and on her return she kept on 
wing till she dropped down upon it. By this instinctive 
precaution of rising immediately from the nest on the bird’s 
departure, and dropping op it when returning, there i$ 
