Page:Once a Week June to Dec 1863.pdf/407

3, 1863.] slugs, and caterpillars is spreading as it has spread in France; and yet the cry is growing fiercer for the destruction of more birds, because grubs and slugs prevail even where they are, while they not the less demolish the fruit. If this last allegation were generally true, it would be evident that the balance of orders in the country generally was really destroyed, and that we might expect national misfortune from insect pests, as Sultans and Pashas in the East do when the clatter of locusts is heard in the breeze. We need not yet, however, make up our minds to the worst. If we can see what it is reasonable to think and to do, we may cheer up as the Eastern ruler never does or can when the locusts are darkening the air,—a veritable cloud of doom.

How was it in our fathers’ days? To the best of my recollection there was, in my youth, as much worry from vermin as now, though perhaps there was not such extensive ravage. Kites and owls and rooks were nailed up on barn-doors: foxes spoiled young broods, and caused many tears among children who wept sore for their pet chicks. Farmers called rooks “black rascals,” and hired bird-boys to scare them from the fields. The squires’ keepers were always provoking village wives, and maid-servants, and school-girls by shooting cats; and the whole neighbourhood complained of the consequent plague of mice. In the kitchen garden, “the worm” was a sad pest in the carrot bed. I used to see gooseberry bushes as bare as any I see now, both as to leaves and fruit; and there was plenty of swearing at the birds in the cherry trees, and the wasps among the apricots. Yet there was no such complaint, as far as I remember, as we hear this autumn of total devastation in the fruit garden. However freely the birds might help themselves, they always left enough for us. I remember no raspberry avenue which yielded, in a favourable season, only two quarts to the household; nor any well-established pear orchard which did not yield bushels, however spitefully the blackbirds might be spoken of which had attacked the sunny side of the very finest pears of the crop. It seems to me that the rude plenty of rural life in former days made the evil less conspicuous than it is now. Three times as much as was wanted was grown of everything; and fruit and flowers were of simpler kinds, and had less cost and care bestowed on them than now. The mice ate the crocus roots as they do now; but there were whole beds of crocuses. Rosebuds were cankered; but they were cut off, and ten times the number crowded into their place. There was an anxious look-out for the rat-catcher when his time was coming round; for not only were the vermin a great vexation in the barn, but the gamekeeper looked vicious at the farmer’s terrier, and he would be shooting the dog and taking charge of the rats, if the clearance was not made presently. It used to be said that the rat-catcher came back in the night, to return two or three rats to the stack or the barn: but this would not have mattered much if the hawks and owls had been allowed to deal with the remnant. As yet, however, one seldom mounted the hills without seeing hawks swooping down, or went through an old wood at night without hearing the owl in some ivied tree, or seeing it flying slowly over the dusky meadows. Now there are whole districts where the hawk, or the owl, is rarely seen or heard: and I can answer for it that in some such places one now hears endless complaints of rats in the drains and poultry-yards, and of mice among the garden beds and in the dairies and cheese-rooms.

The other day our rural policeman came up to my house, with a friendly offer to make a clearance of all the small birds. He would net the ivy, on all sides of the house in turn, and let no little bird escape. He had done this for many gentlemen round about: and he would be very happy to do it for me. He was a good deal surprised when I told him that I could not afford any such proceeding, even if I disliked the birds in the ivy. We have quite trouble enough as it is with the slugs among the cabbages, and the caterpillars among the broccoli and on the gooseberry bushes; and with the wireworm among the seedlings: and we might give up gardening altogether if we took away the only check on insects that we have. Our civil constable may have seen the sparrows regaling themselves at the fowls’ breakfast and supper pans, or swarming out from among the pea-sticks: but it answers better to let them have a handful of Indian meal now and then, and half my early peas, than to turn my garden into such an insect preserve as some that could be shown in the kind policeman’s neighbourhood.

It is no argument for destroying the birds that they do not rid us of the worse enemy. We know, by abundant evidence, that the small birds which most frequent our gardens and dwellings do dispose of an infinite number of caterpillars, grubs, flies, and worms in feeding their young as well as themselves. That there are still more than they can dispose of is no wonder, considering the destruction of birds which has been going on now, faster and faster, more and more spitefully, for years past. It should be remembered that the insect increase goes on at an accelerated rate after the natural check is once impaired. The escaped prey of one pair of finches or sparrows or robins will not only grow up to spoil half-a-dozen vegetables, but will bring forth a progeny which will ruin scores of plants, and leave enough heirs to run through the property of hundreds more. While, therefore, I have wireworms, slugs, larvæ of mischievous moths, &c., in my garden, I shall let the birds try what they can do with the mischief which I certainly cannot manage in any clumsy human method. The thrush which is constant to a corner near my south bedroom window shall not be turned out. The swallows may go on fluttering in and out, under the eaves; the chaffinches shall flit from tree to terrace wall and back again, and come to parade a wisp of dry grass or a fragment of moss at my window, on the way to the nest; and even the prosaic sparrow shall have his green peas and meal pudding (because I cannot prevent it) for the sake of the animal diet which was his first course in life.

The case of the farmer and his fields is a far more serious one than that of any gardeners but nurserymen and market-gardeners. We grow grave when we approach this part of the subject;