poultry, but here in the garden—yonder's his
hole—there is not a rat, mouse, or mole, who is
safe while the weasel is my day watchman and
the owls are my night watchmen against the
little felons. The mole's a capital chap in his
way, but when his way in a garden is under
flower-beds or up and down a lawn, then I thank
the weasel for being fond of him. I would keep
the shrew-mouse here if I could, for he is not
a mouse, and feeds on insects, but I doubt
whether my rat and mouse police would recognise
the zoological distinction. The kestrel is a
famous mouser, by the way, besides eating the
fat moths and beetles that sow grubs over the
garden. I advertised for kestrels, and have
several good families."

"Well, but such highflyers are not to be
tempted with tree-stumps. You don't mean to say
that you get up a tree to build a kestrel's nest?"

"If a boy could do that, Dick, he'd be of
more use to his neighbours than when he climbs
a tree to take a nest. No. Luckily for us the
kestrels never mean to ruin themselves by house-
building. They like to take a nest on a tree
top, that has been left empty by the crows. I
secure them some commodious crows' nests in
an airy situation, and in due season haven't to
wait long before they come. Of course, too,
it is to my advantage that the birds know where
they are safe. The bird I won't eat, I don't kill."

"But you draw such crowds of birds into
your place that I wonder the farmers hereabouts
don't prosecute you. What a lot they must eat!
Those towers full of starlings, for example."

"Yes. The farmers used to slay the starlings,
but now they know better. To see them picking
the ticks off the sheep, and the grubs out of the
grass, and think that not many years ago the
very men whose wealth they were guarding
murdered them by wholesale! Even now, there
are farmers who will say that they suck pigeons'
eggs, because they like the look of a dovecote,
and go in to see their friends the pigeons."

"Then that stone tower of yours is a starling
cote?"

"Just so. After the plan of Mr. Waterton's,
at Walton Hall, where all the birds are
advertised for, and the crops and flowers are always
in sound health. I build it upon a stone table,
that no cat, rat, or weasel, can jump on or climb;
I make holes all over it by leaving out stones,
narrow the way into each hole so that there is
room for a starling to go in and out, but not
room enough for a rook, magpie, or jay; and
there's the cot that contents them. My gardener
is going to believe in all the birds, by the year
eighteen 'seventy. At present he believes in
half of them, but thinks we must make up for
lost work of the birds of prey that civilisation
has cleared out of the land, by killing a certain
number of the little birds, if it is only just to
keep them under."

"That sounds sensible."

"Nevertheless it's a fallacy. For, you see,
civilisation, while it has thinned the ranks of
their enemies has increased enormously our
want of the service of those little birds. The
more the wild land is cultivated, the more is our
need of sharp little eyes and beaks to clear the
caterpillars from the leaves of herb and tree, to
pick away the wire-worms, the cockchafer grubs,
and all the other creatures that prevent the earth
from yielding to man all her increase. Look at
the cockchafer. Every cockchafer that flies has
lived for three years underground as a great fat
grub, gorging itself on the roots of our grass
and vegetables. It lays eggs without end, and
ruins lawns, meadows, corn-fields. When you
are angry with the rooks for pecking up your
lawn—"

"My dear Bob, we have no lawns in
Piccadilly."

"I say, Dick, when my gardener tells me that
the rooks make the lawn ragged, I tell him to
roll it, and bless them for having taken so much
pains to clear it of cockchafer grubs. They
follow the plough, grub-picking, as
industriously as if each were paid by the farmer for
his day's work, and meant to earn his wages.
In one place, where the rooks had all been
massacred, the farmers were obliged to pay
women to follow the plough, and to do imperfectly
for hire what the birds did perfectly well for
nothing. Near Blois, after the birds had been
massacred, the children had to do their work,
and made so little head against the insects, that
cockchafers and their grubs were caught and
measured by the bushel. Whole crops are
destroyed by wire-worm, the underground grub of
the little skip-jack beetle. There's hardly a
little bird that doesn't occupy much of its time
in picking the ground clear of wire-worm, so
the birds do for man what he cannot do for
himself. Even the heaviest iron rollers passed over
the land leave the wire-worm unhurt."

"Certainly. Exactly. I see all that you mean
to say. On cultivated land up with the birds,
and down with all the insects."

"No, Dick, not all the insects." My
venture was an unlucky one. " Not all the insects.
We have friends among them. There's a beetle
just now at your foot that I can't have too many
of. He's the golden ground-beetle, and he slays
my enemies without touching my plants. He's
a fierce hunter of cockchafers. The French
know his worth, and call him the gardener.
Then I have set up a colony of glow-worms,
for the glow-worm feeds on snails; and, if it
were possible for a dead mouse to lie here, a
couple of sexton beetles would get under him
and bury him neatly in little more than a day,
taking him out of sight, and clearing him off by
laying their eggs where the grubs would eat up
his body. Another famous friend of ours among
the insects is the ladybird. The ladybirds will
come in swarms to save the hop-crop when it
is much afflicted with aphides, or green blight.
In hops that is called the fly, and sometimes
does damage enough to make a difference of
two hundred thousand pounds to the hop duty.
In the midst of the aphides, wherever she finds
them, the ladybird lays her eggs, and the larvæ
born among them eat them up for us so greedily
that thousands and thousands of the green