3 
inexhaustible delight to the country lover, and greatly enliven the aspect ot 
our fields and hedgerows. It is gratifying to reflect that of late years legislation 
as well as improved public feeling have greatly mitigated the lot of the inferior 
animals and birds. If excessive preserving were moderated, and the senseless 
practice of shooting every rare or uncommon bird summarily dealt with by legal 
pains and penalties if it will not defer to the strong feeling against it which 
is spreading everywhere through the country, there would not be much to 
complain of in the relations between the inferior creatures and ourselves. 
How game preserving dulls a man’s sense of the innocent life which 
many comparatively, if not wholly, innocent birds lead may be seen if we 
accept the keeper’s invitation to attend him on his great expedition of the year 
against noxious fowls and animals. A'week later an emissary, who has been 
specially sent to us from his proper work of stripping the oaks, which have 
been felled now that the sap runs freely, arrives with a dirty scrawl intimating 
that next morning the keeper will clear off the “ squearls.” Accordingly at 
seven in the morning of a dull June day we join him, with his retinue of four 
men bearing two long ladders, at a certain old oak which he had appointed. 
He informs us that the large wood has been marked off into four portions, and 
that to-day he hopes to work through one of these. A start is speedily made. 
Very soon a carrion crow’s nest is detected. A ladder is put against the 
tree, and the keeper goes up till he can reach the boughs. It is easy then to 
ascend to the nest. All the brood has escaped but two young and terrified 
birds. They flutter among the branches, and are speedily knocked down and 
killed. Next comes a squirrel’s “ dray.” This is torn down, and the three 
young ones which it contains carried off in the keeper’s handkerchief to be sold 
for pets. A sparrow-hawk’s nest is next found. The old one flies off as the 
ladder is placed against the tree, and the keeper luckily has no gun with him. 
The eggs in this nest are “ hard sitting,” and are immediately flung down and 
broken. Missel-thrushes are specially hated by the keeper, and their nests and 
eggs ruthlessly destroyed. In the low brushwood is a white-throat’s nest—a 
bird the most harmless of the harmless ; still the rage for destruction has so 
seized the band that one of the satellites kicks it over and breaks the eggs. 
Four such mornings of devastation among the birds and squirrels render the 
wood a waste so far as the ornithologist is concerned. Let us hope that the 
pheasants increase in proportion to the havoc among their brethren which their 
preservation has caused. It seems as vain to expect game preservers to leave 
any of our larger birds, as it is in a highly farmed country to hope that any 
wild flowers may be spared near the low hedges so dear to the advanced farmer. 
But we have rambled past the gibbet under the high grove of beeches, 
which kill everything beneath their branches save moss ; and the moss and 
their own decaying leaves in the course of generations have heaped up high 
banks of rich earth around their gnarled roots. There is a faint rustle of 
leaves on high—“ Aurora’s fan,” as Milton calls it—inexpressibly grateful to the 
ear. And far off in the recesses of the firs a low soft crooning seems to rise 
and fall on the breeze— 
Aerise quo congessere palumbes. 
Only these are turtle doves ; not the dark-collared Barbary doves which are 
kept in cages, but the Turtur Communis , a summer visitant, smaller than the 
wood-pigeon and beautifully proportioned. It has increased lately in these 
woods, and is, it may be trusted, one of the many blessings which country- 
dwellers thankfully acknowledge as being due to the Bird Bills. 
Copies of this Leaflet, 3 d. per dozen, or Is. 9 d. per 100, and other publications 
of the Society, can be obtained from the Hon. Secretary, at the Society’s London 
Office, 326 , High Holborn, W.C. 
