œuvring); nine times out of ten the experiment ends in failure. So much the better for those on whose lands they come at various seasons. Plovers are largely affected in their movements by the weather.

The kestrel, the mouse-killing falcon, not only gets shot, but insult is added to injury, for he is nailed up to the end of the barn. The falcon glides and hovers all the day, and until late in the evening, catching mice and other small deer. The numbers of large short-tailed field-mice, or voles, in some chalky upland pastures, are simply startling. They are vegetable feeders, and when full-grown are as large as a half-grown rat; if you examine the mouth of one you will see it is like that of the hare. These, with the fawn-coloured long-tailed field or wood mouse, work sad havoc in farm gardens. kestrel kills them day by day, as he hovers and fans over field after field. For this service he is made heartily welcome to a charge of shot. I have a dim recollection of a sage warning that formed a copyslip in my school days, “Put not temptation in the way of youth." It applies to all ages, I fancy. If the farmer's wife had not placed her brood of chicks with their mother under the coop in the short

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The

mown grass in the paddock away from the house, the kestrel would not have spied them out, running to and fro, as he fanned over his mouse-hunting. The sight rouses his hunting instincts at once, and they are too strong to be held in check, choice Dorking chicks though these be. And if he is seen in the act it is enough to doom him and all his race for years to come; one chick that might never have attained maturity weighs down the balance of slain field-mice in hundreds.

There is one thing to be said, if one of the raptores gets killed another takes up his beat very quickly; so that in spite of himself the farmer has his winged mouse-hunter over his fields as usual. We have yet much to learn about bird-life.

To the owls-the farmer's feathered cats we might call them after all, we give the palm for usefulness and intelligence, although we have purposely put them last on our list. Without them all his efforts might be useless, for they prey on those creatures that work him harm in the night-time. what they kill and eat on the spot, or take to their young, they set by a store for some future time. watching any pair that have settled on some farm,

Besides

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you will find that from sunset to sunrise they go to and fro continually; and they never come to the nest without a quarry of some kind. The tide of public opinion is turning in favour of the owl at last; let us hope it will bring protection to other creatures also.

CHAPTER V.

THE FINCH FAMILY.

"WHAT are you in such a hurry to get your gun for?" I ask one of my friends, who fills the position of man-of-all-work in the place where I am staying for a time. His post, however, is rather a nominal one, for most of his time is spent in gardening.

I often have a chat with him, for I enjoy his quaint, original remarks, and although, as a rule, he is not expansive, when he does choose to talk he is always worth listening to. Besides this, he keeps his garden in excellent trim, and if there is one crop in it on which the old boy prides himself more than another, it is his peas. "No one ken come up to 'em round about here," he has told me more than once, with pardonable pride.

"What do I want with the gun? Hawfinches; they hawfinches in my peas!" he grunts.

As he leaves the tool-house I quietly follow, and place myself with him behind a low fagot - stack which stands in a line with the peas.

"Jest hear 'em! ain't it cruel?" he whispers. "I hope the whole roost of 'em may git in a lump so that I ken blow 'em to rags an' tatters. If you didn't know what it was you'd think some old cow was grindin' up them peas. Ain't they scrunchin' of 'em? All right now, I ken see you grindin' varmints! Now for it!" Bang!

Three birds fall-young ones in their first plumage, which has a strong likeness to that of a greenfinch.

After picking the birds up, we examine the pearows. There is no doubt as to the mischief the birds have done. The old fellow's own expression, “grinding up," is the best to convey any idea of the destruction that has taken place. Where the birds have been, nothing remains but the stringy portion. of the pods of his precious" Marrer fats."

The

There is enormous power in the bill of the hawfinch, when the size of the bird is considered. pea-pod is simply run through the bill, and the con