Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/235

Rh species may result, through the drain upon food supplies, never an unlimited commodity in nature, in the destruction of many other plants and animals upon which other creatures depend. Nature has laws which are not to be tampered with.

The grouse moors, deer forests, trout streams are but different settings for the same problem; a sanctuary is supplied for many an innocent animal; their enemies absent, they flourish abundantly. Some, however—the rat and house-sparrow, for example—are anything but innocent so far as man's welfare is concerned, and they, too, benefit by food and asylum. Both in moderation might be useful members of society; unchecked by natural foes they are a menace.

That the sparrowhawk can be included as a bird with any virtue may astonish some preservers. Lord Lilford, sportsman and naturalist, shall answer in his words to Canon Tristram: "The sparrowhawk does good service by taking hard-billed birds, as Passer impudicus (Mihi), Damnabilis (Irby), Papisticus (Tristram), sanguiueus (agricola), and other grain-devourers." Even the most inveterate destroyer of game, so long as its numbers do not increase inordinately, is useful in preventing the multiplication of other possible nuisances.

The science and cunning of the game preserver and his agents have failed to subdue the adaptive Corvidæ, though some are in a parlous state. The magpie is rare in certain areas, but it makes up by overabundance where the gamekeeper holds no sway; there the lesser fowl suffer from its keen eye and wicked beak. The jay defies persecution; there may be many moulderlng corpses on the keeper's gibbet, but the survivors scream defiance from the thickets, eluding gun, trap, and poison. The keeper is not to blame in all cases for the scarcity of the raven, carrion and hooded crow in many areas. Sentimental