Part 10

When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign of further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod with the wire attached--or if you wish to make experiments, the rod without the wire--can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose.

SPORT AND SCIENCE

Kingfisher Corner was the first place I made for when, as a lad, I started from home with my gun. The dew of September lies long on the grass, and by the gateway I often noticed wasps that had spent the night in the bunches, numbed and chilled, crawling up the blades bent into an arch by the weight of the drops. Thence they got on the gate, where, too, the flies congregated at that time in the morning; for while it was still cool at the surface on the ground, the dry wood soon absorbed the heat of the sun. This warmth brought them to life again, and after getting well charged with it, the insects flew off to any apples they could discover. These heavy dews, as the summer declines, keep the grass fresh and green, and maintain the leaves on hedge and tree; yet they do not reach the earth, which remains dry. It is a different dew to the spring dew, or acts in another manner: the spring dews moisten the earth, and from the arable lands as the sun shines forth you may see the vapour rise and drift along the surface, like the smoke of a gun on a damp day. The mottled geometrical giant spiders find their webs thick with this September dew, which seems as if a little unctuous. Stepping through the gateway with the morning sun behind me, I saw at each step a fresh circle of dewdrops gleam, some ruby, some emerald, some brightly white, at the same distance in front. The angle of refraction advanced as I moved; there was a point at which the dewdrop shot back a brilliant ray, and then became invisible, or appeared a mere drop of dull water.

By moonlight there is thus formed a semicircle of light on the grass, which continually moves before you; it is a halo on the grass-tips. I noticed this as a boy, and tried all sorts of experiments respecting it, but never met with any mention of it in books till quite lately, in Benvenuto Cellini's "Autobiography." He says, "There appeared a resplendent light over my head, which has displayed itself conspicuously to all I have thought proper to show it to, but those were very few. This shining light is to be seen in the morning over my shadow till two o'clock in the afternoon, and it appears to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with dew; it is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This phenomenon I took notice of in Paris, because the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy, where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see it even here, and show it to others, though not to the same advantage as in France." Benvenuto thought this one of the most extraordinary things that had happened to him; and records it after a wonderful dream, as if it, too, were supernatural. It is, however, possible that some eyes are so constituted as not to be able to see this phenomenon in their own case; at least, I have sometimes tried in vain to get other people to see it. I should not have noticed it had I not been about at all hours with my gun as a boy. It is much more visible by moonlight, when the rabbits' white tails go dot, dot, lightly over the grass, and you are just as likely to shoot at their shadows as at their bodies. As the scythe of the mower mows a swathe before him, so the semicircle of light moves in front over the dew, and the grass appears another tint, as it does after a roller has passed.

In a scientific publication not long since, a letter was published describing what the writer supposed was indeed something extraordinary. He had seen a fragment of rainbow--a square piece, as it were--by itself in the sky, some distance to one side of the sun. In provincial papers such letters may often be found, and even, until lately, in papers issued in London; now with accurate accounts of an ordinary halo about the sun, now with a description of a prismatic cloud round the moon, and one day some one discovered that there were two currents of air, as the clouds went in two directions. Now, it is clear enough that none of these writers had ever been out with a gun or a rod; I mean out all day, and out in the full sense of the phrase. They had read books of science; from their language they were thoroughly educated, and felt a deep interest in natural phenomena. Yet what a marvel was here made out of the commonest incidents of the sky! Halos about the sun happen continually; the prismatic band or cloud about the moon is common; so is the detached rainbow; as for the two currents of air, the clouds often travel in three directions, occasionally in four. These incidents are no more surprising to a sportsman than the sunset. I saw them, as a boy, almost day by day, and recorded the meteors in the evening. It seems to me that I used to see scores of meteors of various degrees of brightness. Once the path, the woods, the fields, and the distant hills were lit as if with a gigantic electric light; I was so interested in tracing the well-known scene so suddenly made apparent in the darkness that it was not for some seconds I thought of looking for the bolide, but even then I was in time to see it declining just before extinction. Others who have been out with their guns have, of course, seen exactly the same things; I do not mention them to claim for myself any special powers of observation, but as instances of the way in which sport brings one in contact with nature. Other sportsmen, too, must have smiled at the marvel made of such appearances by clever and well-educated, but indoor, people.

This very spring (1883), as I walked about a town in the evening, I used to listen to find if I could hear any one mention the zodiacal light, which, just after sunset, was distinctly visible for a fortnight at a time. It was more than usually distinct, a perfect cone, reaching far up into the sky among the western stars. No one seemed to observe it, though it faced them evening after evening. Here was an instance in the opposite direction--a curious phenomenon, even now rather the subject of hypothesis than of demonstration, entirely overlooked. The common phenomenon made a marvel, and the unexplained phenomenon unnoticed. Both in the eyes of a thoughtful person are equally wonderful; but that point of view is apart from my present object, which is to show that sport trains the eye. As a boy, roving about the hedges with my gun, it was my especial delight to see Mercury, because one of the great astronomers had never seen that planet, and because in all the books it was stated as difficult to see. The planet was favourably situated, and I used to see it constantly after sunset then, pale, and but just outside the sunset glow, only a little way above the distant hills. Now it is curious, to remark in passing, that as the sun sets behind a hill the slope of the hill towards you is often obscured by his light. It appears a luminous misty surface, rosy-tinted, and this luminous mist hides the trees upon it, so that the slope is apparently nothing but a broad sweep of colour; while those hills opposite the sun, even if twice as distant, are so clearly defined that the smallest object is evident upon them. Sometimes, instead of the mist on the western hill, there is a blood-like purple almost startling in its glory of light.

There have been few things I have read of, or studied, which in some manner or other I have not seen illustrated in this country while out in the fields. It is said that in the Far West, on the level prairies, when the snow covers them, you see miles and miles away, a waggon stopping; you hurry on, and in half a day's journey overtake it, to find the skull of an ox--so greatly has distance and the mirage of the snow magnified its apparent size. But a few days since I saw some rooks on the telegraph wires against a bright sky, but as I approached they flew and resolved into starlings, so much had the brilliant light deceived me. A hare sometimes, on the open ground, looks at a distance, in the sunny days of May when hares are often abroad in daylight, as big as a good-sized dog, and, except by the leap and the absence of visible tail, can hardly be told from a dog. The bamboo fishing-rods, if you will glance at the bamboo itself as you fish, seem the most singular of growths. There is no wood in the hedge like it, neither ash, hazel, oak, sapling, nor anything; it is thoroughly foreign, almost unnatural. The hard knots, the hollow stem, the surface glazed so as to resist a cut with a knife and nearly turn the steel--this is a tropical production alone. But while working round the shore presently you come to the sedges, and by the sedges stands a bunch of reeds. A reed is a miniature bamboo, the same shape, the same knots, and glazy surface; and on reference to any intelligent work of botany, it appears that they both belong to the same order of inward-growing Endogens, so that a few moments bestowed on the reed by the waters give a clear idea of the tropical bamboo, and make the singular foreign production home-like and natural.

I found, while I was shooting every day, that the reeds, and ferns, and various growths through which I pushed my way, explained to me the jungles of India, the swamps of Central Africa, and the backwoods of America; all the vegetation of the world. Representatives exist in our own woods, hedges, and fields, or by the shore of inland waters. It was the same with flowers. I think I am scientifically accurate in saying that every known plant has a relative of the same species or genus, growing wild in this country. The very daisy, the commonest of all, contains a volume of botany; so do the heaths, and the harebells that hang so heavily under the weight of the September dew. The horse-tails by the shore carry the imagination further back into the prehistoric world when relations of these plants flourished as trees. The horse-tails by ponds are generally short, about a foot or eighteen inches high, more or less, but in ditches occasionally there are specimens of the giant horse-tail as high as the waistcoat, with a stem as thick as a walking-stick. This is a sapling from which the prehistoric tree can readily be imagined. From our southern woods the wild cat has been banished, but still lives in the north as an English representative of that ferocious feline genus which roams in tropical forests. We still have the deer, both wild and in parks. Then there are the birds, and these, in the same manner as plants, represent the inhabitants of the trackless wilds abroad. Happily the illustration fails mostly in reptiles, which need not be regretted; but even these, in their general outline as it were, are presented.

It has long been one of my fancies that this country is an epitome of the natural world, and that if any one has come really into contact with its productions, and is familiar with them, and what they mean and represent, then he has a knowledge of all that exists on the earth. It holds good even of Australia; for palaeontologists produce fossil remains of marsupials or kangaroos. As for the polar conditions, when going round for snipes I constantly saw these in miniature. The planing action of ice was shown in the ditches, where bridges of ice had been formed; these slipping, with a partial thaw, smoothed the grasses and mars of teazles in the higher part of the slope, and then lower down, as the pressure increased, cut away the earth, exposing the roots of grasses, and sometimes the stores of acorns laid up by mice. Frozen again in the night, the glacier stayed, and crumbling earth, leaves, fibres, acorns, and small dead boughs fell on it. Slipping on as the wind grew warmer, it carried these with it and deposited them fifty yards from where they originated. This is exactly the action of a glacier. The ice-mist was often visible over the frozen water-meadows, where I went for duck, teal, and at intervals a woodcock in the adjacent mounds. But it was better seen in the early evening over a great pond, a mile or more long; where, too, the immense lifting power of water was exemplified, as the merest trickle of a streamlet flowing in by-and-by forced up the thick ice in broad sheets weighing hundreds of tons. Then, too, breathing-holes formed just as they are described in the immense lakes of North America, Lakes Superior or Michigan, and in the ice of the Polar circle. These were never frozen over, and attracted wild-fowl.

In August, when there were a few young ducks about, the pond used to remind me in places of the tropical lakes we heard so much of after the explorers got through the portentous continent, on account of the growth of aquatic weeds, the quantity and extent of which no one would credit who had not seen them. No wonder the explorers could not get through the papyrus-grown rivers and lakes, for a boat could hardly be forced through these. Acres upon acres of weeds covered the place, some coming up from a depth of twelve feet. Some fish are chiefly on the feed in the morning, and any one who has the courage to get up at five will find them ravenous. We often visited the place a little after that hour. A swim was generally the first thing, and I mention a swim because it brings me to the way in which this mere pond illustrated the great ocean which encircles the world. For it is well known that the mighty ocean is belted with currents, the cold water of the Polar seas seeking the warmth of the Equator, and the warm water of the Equator floating--like the Gulf Stream--towards the Pole, floating because (I think I am right) the warm water runs on the surface. The favourite spot for swimming in our pond was in such a position that a copse cast a wide piece of water there into deep shadow all the morning up till ten o'clock at least. At six in the morning this did not matter, all the water was of much the same temperature; having been exposed to the night everywhere, it was cold of course.

But after ten the thing was different; by that time the hot reaper's sun had warmed the surface of the open water on which the rays fell almost from the moment the sun rose. Towards eleven o'clock the difference in temperature was marked; but those who then came to bathe, walking along the shore or rowing, dipped their hands in and found the water warm, and anticipated that it would be equally so at the bathing-place. So it was at the surface, for the warm water had begun to flow in, and the cold water out, rather deeper, setting up, in fact, an exact copy of the current of the ocean, the shadowed part by the copse representing the Polar area. Directly any one began to swim he found the difference, the legs went down into cold water, and in many cases cramp ensued with alarming results and danger. Down to the chest it was warm, quite warm, while the feet were very cold. Not much imagination is needed to conceive the effect on persons not used to rough bathing, and even a strong man might suffer. People insisted that these chills and cramps were caused by cold springs rising at the bottom, and could not be argued out of that belief. As a matter of fact there was not a single spring over the whole extent of the bottom. That part in particular was often dry, not from dry weather, but as the water of the pond was drawn away. Let it rain as much as it would, no spring ever broke up there. The cold currents were produced by the shadow of the copse, and, had the trees been felled, would have disappeared. That would have been like letting the sun of the Equator shine on the Polar seas.

After a storm of wind the lee shore was marked with a dark-green line of weeds and horse-tails, torn up and drifted across, which had been thrown up by the little breakers beyond the usual level of the water. A mass of other weeds and horse-tails, boughs and leaves, remained floating; and now was seen a reversal of the habits of fishes. Every one knows that fishes seek the windward shore in a breeze for the insects blown in; but now, while the gale, though subsiding, still rippled the water, the best place to fish was on the lee shore, just at the edge of the drifted weeds. Various insects probably were there washed away from the green raft to which they had clung. The water being often lowered by drawing hatches, the level changed frequently; and as storms of wind happened at different levels, so there were several little raised beaches showing where the level had been, formed of washed gravel and stones--the counterpart, in fact, of the raised beaches of the geologists. When the water was almost all drawn off, then there was a deep winding channel in the mud of the bottom, along which trickled a little streamlet which fed the pond. The sun hardening the mud, it was possible by-and-by to walk to the edge of the channel, where it could be seen that the streamlet ran five or six feet deep between precipitous banks of mud.

Near where the stream first entered the pond the deposit was much deeper, for this five feet of alluvium had, in fact, been brought down by one small brook in the course of little more than fifty years. The pond had been formed fifty years previously, but already in so short a period, geologically speaking, all that end was silting up, and the little brook was making a delta, and a new land was rising from the depths of the wave. This is exactly what has happened on an immensely larger scale in the history of the earth, and any one who had seen it, and knew the circumstances, could comprehend the enormous effects produced in geological time by rivers like the Ganges, the Amazon, or Nile. Going by with a gun so frequently, one could not help noticing these things, and remembering them when reading Lyell's "Geology," or Maury's book on the sea, or the innumerable treatises bearing on the same interesting questions. Whether en route for the rabbit-ground, or looking for water-fowl, or later for snipe, I never passed by without finding something, often a fragment of fossil washed from the gravel or sand by the last storm.

NATURE AND THE GAMEKEEPER

The changes in the fauna of the inland counties brought about by the favour shown to certain species are very remarkable. The alterations caused by the preservation of pheasants have reached their limit. No further effects are likely to be produced, even if pheasant-preserving should be carried to a still greater extent, which itself is improbable. One creature at least, the pine-marten, has been exterminated over Southern England, and is now only to be seen--in the stuffed state--in museums. It may be roughly described as a large tree-weasel, and was shot down on account of its habit of seizing pheasants at roost. The polecat is also practically extinct, though occasional specimens are said to occur. These two animals could not be allowed to exist in any preserve. But it is in the list of birds that the change is most striking. Eagles are gone: if one is seen it is a stray from Scotland or Wales; and so are the buzzards, except from the moors. Falcons are equally rare: the little merlin comes down from the north now and then, but the peregrine falcon as a resident or regular visitor is extinct. The hen-harrier is still shot at intervals; but the large hawks have ceased out of the daily life, as it were, of woods and fields. Horned owls are becoming rare; even the barn-owl has all but disappeared from some districts, and the wood-owl is local. The raven is extinct--quite put out. The birds are said to exist near the sea-coast; but it is certain that any one may walk over inland country for years without seeing one. These, being all more or less birds of prey, could not but be excluded from pheasant-covers. All these birds, however, would probably resume their ancient habitations in the course of five-and-twenty years if permitted to do so. They exist plentifully at no great distance--judged as such strong flyers judge distance; and if they found that they were unmolested they would soon come back from the extremities of the land.

But even more remarkable than the list of birds driven away is the list of those creatures, birds and animals, which have stood their ground in spite of traps, guns, and dogs. Stoats and weasels are always shot when seen, they are frequently trapped, and in every manner hunted to the death and their litters destroyed--the last the most effectual method of extermination. But in spite of the unceasing enmity directed against them, stoat and weasel remain common. They still take their share of game, both winged and ground. Stoat and weasel will not be killed out. As they are both defenceless creatures, and not even swift of foot, being easily overtaken in the open, their persistent continuance is curious. If any reason can be assigned for it, it must be because they spend much of their time in buries, where they are comparatively safe, and because they do not confine themselves to woods, but roam cornfields and meadows. Certainly, if man has tried to exterminate any creature, he has tried his hardest to get rid of these two, and has failed. It is even questionable whether their numbers show any appreciable diminution. Kept down to the utmost in one place, they flourish in another. Kestrel and sparrowhawk form a parallel among winged creatures. These two hawks have been shot, trapped, and their eggs destroyed unsparingly: they remain numerous just the same. Neither of them choose inaccessible places for their eyries; neither of them rear large broods. The sparrowhawk makes a nest in a tree, often in firs; the kestrel lays in old rooks', crows', or magpies' nests. Both the parents are often shot on or near the nest, and the eggs broken. Sometimes the young are permitted to grow large enough to fly, and are then shot down after the manner of rook-shooting. Nevertheless kestrels are common, and sparrowhawks, if not quite so numerous, are in no degree uncommon. Perhaps the places of those killed are supplied by birds from the great woods, moors, and mountains of the north.

A third instance is the crow. Hated by all gamekeepers, and sportsmen, by farmers, and every one who has anything to do with country life, the crow survives. Cruel tyrant as he is to every creature smaller than himself, not a voice is raised in his favour. Yet crows exist in considerable numbers. Shot off in some places, they are recruited again from others where there is less game preservation. The case of the crow, however, is less striking than that of the two hawks; because the crow is a cosmopolitan bird, and if every specimen in the British Isles were destroyed to-day, there would be an influx from abroad in a very short time. The crow is, too, partly a sea-coast feeder, and so escapes. Still, to any one who knows how determined is the hostility to his race shown by all country people, his existence in any number must be considered remarkable. His more powerful congener the raven, as has been pointed out, is practically extinct in southern counties, and no longer attacks the shepherd's weakly lambs. Why, then, does the crow live on? Wherever a pair of ravens do exist the landowner generally preserves them now, as interesting representatives of old times. They are taken care of; people go to see them; the appearance of eggs in the nest is recorded. But the raven does not multiply. Barn-owls live on, though not in all districts. Influenced by the remonstrance of naturalists, many gentlemen have stopped the destruction of owls; but a custom once established is not easily put an end to.

Jays and magpies have also been subjected to a bitter warfare of extermination. Magpies are quite shot off some places; in others they exist sparingly; here and there they may be found in fair numbers. Occasionally their nests are preserved--indeed, the growing tendency is to spare. Still, they have been shot off rigorously, and have survived it. So have jays. In large woods--particularly where there is much fir--jays are so numerous that to destroy them seems almost impossible. Another bird that has defied the gun and trap is the green woodpecker, which used to be killed for alleged destruction of timber. Woodpeckers are not now so ceaselessly killed, though the old system of slaying them is common enough. They have defied not only gun and trap, but the cunning noose placed at the mouth of their holes.

Twenty creatures, furred and feathered, have undergone severe persecution since the extension of pheasant-covers, and of these the first nine have more or less succumbed--namely, pine-marten, polecat, eagle, buzzard, falcon, kite, horned owl, harrier, and raven. The remaining eleven have survived--namely, stoat, weasel, rat, crow, kestrel, sparrowhawk, brown and barn owl, jay, magpie, and woodpecker. Pheasants of themselves are not responsible for all this warfare and all these changes; but the pheasant-cover means more than pheasants, or rather has done. Rabbits required even more protection from furred enemies; the head of rabbits kept up in many places practically paid the keeper's wages. This warfare in its fiercest form may be roughly said to be coeval with the invention of the percussion gun, and to have raged now for over half a century. The resistance, therefore, of the various species has been fairly tested, and we may reasonably conclude that no further disappearance will take place, unless by the destruction of woods themselves. One new bird only has been introduced into England since the pheasant--the red-legged partridge which seems to be fairly established in some districts, not to the entire satisfaction of sportsmen. One new bird has also been introduced into Scotland--in this case a re-introduction. The magnificent capercailzie is now flourishing again in the north, to the honour of those who laboured for its restoration. In these notes I have not included attempts at acclimatisation, as that of the wild turkey from North America, which has partly succeeded. Beavers, too, have been induced to resume possession of their ancient streams under careful supervision, but they are outside present consideration. While England has thus lost some species and suffered a diminution of several, other countries have been supplied from our streams and woods and hedgerows. England has sent the sparrow to the United States and Australia; also the nightingale, rabbit, salmon, trout, and sweet-briar.

It is quite open to argument that pheasant-covers have saved as well as destroyed. Wood-pigeons could scarcely exist in such numbers without the quiet of preserved woods to breed in; nor could squirrels. Nor can the rarity of such birds as the little bearded tit be charged on game. The great bustard, the crane, and bittern have been driven away by cultivation. The crane, possibly, has deserted us wilfully; since civilisation in other countries has not destroyed it. And then the fashion of making natural history collections has much extended of recent years: so much so, that many blame too ardent collectors for the increasing rarity of birds like the crossbill, waxwing, hoopoe, golden oriole, and others which seem to have once visited this country more commonly than at present.

THE SACRIFICE TO TROUT

How much the breeding of pheasants has told upon the existence of other creatures in fur and feathers I have already shown; and much the same thing is true of the preservation of trout. There is this difference, however: that while the pheasant has now produced its utmost effect, the alterations due to trout are increasing. Trout are now so highly and so widely preserved that the effect cannot but be felt. Their preservation in the numbers now considered necessary entails the destruction of some and the banishment of other creatures. The most important of these is the otter. Guns, dogs, traps set under water so as not to be scented; all modes of attack are pressed into the service, and it is not often that he escapes. When traces of an otter were found, a little while since, in the Kennet--he had left his mark on the back of a trout--the fact was recorded with as much anxiety as if a veritable wolf had appeared. With such animosity has the otter been hunted that he is becoming one of the rarest of wild animals here in the south. He is practically extinct on the majority of southern streams, and has been almost beaten off the Thames itself. But the otter is not likely to be exterminated in the sense that the wolf has been. Otters will be found elsewhere in England long after the last of them has disappeared from the south. Next the pike must be ousted from trout-streams. Special nets have been invented by which pike can be routed from their strongholds. Much hunting about quickens the intelligence of the pike to such a degree that he cannot be secured in the ordinary manner; he baffles the net by keeping close to the bank, behind stones, or by retiring to holes under roots. Perch have to go as well as pike; and then comes the turn of birds.

Herons, kingfishers, moorhens, coots, grebes, ducks, teal, various divers, are all proscribed on behalf of trout. Herons are regarded as most injurious to a fishery. As was observed a century ago, a single heron will soon empty a pond or a stretch of brook. As their long necks give them easy command of a wide radius in spying round them, it is rather difficult to shoot them with a shot-gun; but with the small-bore rifles now made no heron is safe. They are generally shot early in the morning. Were it not for the fact that herons nest like rooks, and that heronries are valued appurtenances in parks, they would soon become scarce. Kingfishers prey on smaller fish, but are believed to eat almost as many as herons. Kingfishers resort in numbers to trout nurseries, which are as traps for them: and there they are more than decimated. Owls are known to take fish occasionally, and are therefore shot. The greatest loss sustained in fisheries takes place in the spawning season, and again when the fry are about. Some students of fish-life believe that almost all wild-fowl will swallow the ova and fry of trout. It must be understood that I am not here entering into the question whether all these are really so injurious; I am merely giving a list of the "dogs with a bad name." Moorhens and coots are especially disliked because they are on or near the water day and night, and can clear off large quantities of fry. Grebes (di-dappers or dabchicks) are similar in habit, but less destructive because fewer. Ducks are ravenous devourers; teal are equally hated. The various divers which occasionally visit the streams are also guilty. Lastly, the swan is a well-known trout-pirate. Besides these, the two kinds of rat--land and water--have a black mark against them. Otter, pike, perch, heron, kingfisher, owl, moorhen, coot, grebe, diver, wild-duck, swan, teal, dipper, land-rat, and water-rat--altogether sixteen creatures--are killed in order that one may flourish. Although none of these, even in the south of England--except the otter--has yet been excluded, the majority of them are so thinned down as to be rarely seen unless carefully sought.

To go through the list: otters are practically excluded; the pike is banished from trout streams but is plentiful in others; so too with perch; herons, much reduced in numbers; owls, reduced; kingfishers, growing scarce; coots, much less numerous because not permitted to nest; grebes, reduced; wild-duck, seldom seen in summer, because not permitted to nest; teal, same; swan, not permitted on fisheries unless ancient rights protect it; divers, never numerous, now scarcer; moorhens, still fairly plentiful because their ranks are constantly supplied from moats and ponds where they breed under semi-domestic conditions. The draining of marsh-lands and levels began the exile of wild-fowl; and now the increasing preservation of trout adds to the difficulties under which these birds strive to retain a hold upon inland waters. The Thames is too long and wide for complete exclusion; but it is surprising how few moorhens even are to be seen along the river. Lesser rivers are still more empty, as it were, of life. The great osier-beds still give shelter to some, but not nearly so many as formerly. Up towards the spring-heads, where the feeders are mere runlets, the scarcity of wild-fowl has long been noticed. Hardly a wild-duck is now seen; one or two moorhens or a dabchick seem all. Coots have quite disappeared in some places: they are shot on ponds, having an ill reputation for the destruction of the fry of coarse or pond fish, as well as of trout. Not all these changes, indeed, are attributable to trout alone; but the trout holds a sort of official position and leads the van. Other southern rivers, with the exception of the Thames, are for the most part easily preserved.

They run through cultivated country, with meadows or cornfields, woods or copses, and rarely far through open, unenclosed land. A stranger, and without permission, would often find it difficult to walk half a mile along the bank of such a stream as this. Consequently, if it is desired to preserve it, the riparian owners can do so to the utmost, and the water-fowl considered injurious to fish can as easily be kept down. It is different in the north, for instance, where the streams have a background of moors, mountains, tarns, and lakes. In these their fastnesses birds find some security. From the coast they are also recruited; while on our southern coasts it is a source of lament that wild-fowl are not nearly so plentiful as formerly. Of course in winter it often happens that a flock of wild-fowl alight in passing; but how long do they stay? The real question is, how many breed? Where trout are carefully preserved, very few indeed; so that it is evident trout are making as much difference as the pheasants. Trout preservation has become much more extended since the fish has been studied and found to be easily bred. Advertisements are even put forward recommending people to keep trout instead of poultry, since they can be managed with certainty. It seems reasonable, therefore, to suppose that the influence of trout on wild creatures will continue to extend for some time yet. Already where trout preservation has been carefully carried out it has produced a visible impression upon their ranks. In ten years, if it were abandoned, most of these creatures would be plentiful again on the waters from which they have been driven; I should myself be very glad to see many of them back again.

But if preservation has excluded many creatures, it has also saved many. Badgers, in all probability, would be extinct--really extinct, like the wolf--were it not for the seclusion of covers. Without the protection which hunting affords them, foxes would certainly have disappeared. The stag and fallow-deer are other examples; so, too, the wild white cattle maintained in a few parks. In a measure the rook owes its existence to protection; for although naturalists have pointed out its usefulness, the rook is no favourite with agriculturists. Woodcocks, again, are protected, and are said to have increased, though it is open to question if their increased numbers may not be due to other causes. Cultivation banishes wild geese and snipe, but adds to the numbers of small birds, I fancy, and very probably to the number of mice. When the country was three-fourths champaign--open, unenclosed, and uncultivated--it cannot be supposed that so many grain-eating birds found sustenance as now. The subject is capable of much development Enough, however, has been said to show that Nature at present is under artificial restraints; but her excluded creatures are for the most part ready to return if ever those restraints are removed.

THE HOVERING OF THE KESTREL

There has lately been some discussion about the hovering of kestrels: the point being whether the bird can or cannot support itself in the air while stationary, without the assistance of one or more currents of air. The kestrel is the commonest hawk in the southern parts of England, so that many opportunities occur to observe his habits; and there ought not to be any doubt in the matter. It is even alleged that it will go far to decide the question of the possibility of flight or of the construction of an aerial machine. Without entering into this portion of the discussion, let us examine the kestrel's habits.