Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/203

Rh where the spear beak struck; the rail above the outflow stream glistens in the sun, for there the kingfisher beats off the scales of the minnows, its victims. Under the bracken fronds are bleached bones of a fallow fawn, starved during the winter; a ring-dove, struck down but discarded, suggests the passage of a peregrine; a litter of feathers is all that the fox has left to mark the murder of a pheasant. The tail of a chaffinch and a decapitated bunting lie at the foot of the tree where a carrion has a nest; not far away are a brood of young jays, thrown out to perish miserably when a fierce gale overturned the nest.

Man, though the direct or indirect cause of the death of many creatures, plays but a small part in this great tragedy of nature. His interference, except in a few instances, does not lessen or increase the actual death-rate of wild creatures; slaughter for food continues whether he steps in to take a hand or not. When, however, he attempts to regulate the massacre, strives to protect one species from its foes or to wipe another off the face of the land, he causes widespread calamity, for very precise and definite, albeit ruthless, laws regulate birth and death rate in nature. The Balance of Nature—have not the masters of science pointed out what it means again and again? Yet, how readily we forget or ignore their teaching, for the relative abundance of interdependent animals and plants must be, in the long run, a stable quantity. In order that there may be neither increase nor decrease, when we take an average of many generations, it is absolutely necessary that each pair of animals shall produce during their whole lifetime no more nor no less than a couple of offspring to perpetuate the species; the rest, however many see the light of day, must perish childless. Naturally the number varies with regard to individuals; some leave more survivors, some none, and from year to year increase or decrease in the species may