like rooks. Rooks are so bound by
tradition and habit that they very rarely quit the locality where they
were reared. Their whole lives are spent in the neighbourhood of the
nest, trees, and the woods where they sleep. They may travel miles
during the day, but they always come back to roost. These are the birds
that suffer the most during long frosts and snows. Unable to break the
chain that binds them to one spot, they die rather than desert it. A
miserable time, indeed, they had of it that winter, but I never heard
that any one proposed feeding the rooks, the very birds that wanted it
most.

Swallows, again, were declared by many to be fewer. It is not at all
unlikely that they were fewer. The wet season was unfavourable to them;
still a good deal of the supposed absence of swallows may be through the
observer not looking for them in the right place. If not wheeling in the
sky, look for them over the water, the river, or great ponds; if not
there, look along the moist fields or shady woodland meadows. They vary
their haunts with the state of the atmosphere, which causes insects to
be more numerous in one place at one time, and presently in another.

A very wet season is more fatal than the sharpest frost; it acts by
practically reducing the births, leaving the ordinary death-rate to
continue. Consequently, as the old birds die, there are none (or fewer)
to supply their places. Once more let me express the opinion that there
are as many small birds round London as in the country, and no measure
is needed to protect the species at large. Protection, if needed, is
required for the individual. Sweep the roads and lanes clear of the
birdcatchers, but do not prevent a boy from taking a nest in the open
fields or commons. If it were made illegal to sell full-grown birds,
half the evil would be stopped at once if the law were enforced. The
question is full of difficulties. To prevent or attempt to prevent the
owner of a garden from shooting the bullfinches or blackbirds and so on
that steal his fruit, or destroy his buds, is absurd. It is equally
absurd to fine--what twaddle!--a lad for taking a bird's egg. The only
point upon which I am fully clear is that the birdcatcher who takes
birds on land not his own or in his occupation, on public property, as
roads, wastes, commons, and so forth, ought to be rigidly put down. But
as for the small birds as a mass, I am convinced that they will never
cease out of the land.

It is