interest in the same subject I might write at length, but that, as Rudyard Kipling would say, is another story. Some day I shall hope to induce this bright and winsome little lady to tell the story herself for the benefit of our readers. Meanwhile here's a health to Mr. McCarthy, the most genuine and lovable of men.

A correspondent writes from Elstree, criticising the article we published on "Furs and their Wearers," and joins issue with Mrs. Pike regarding the squirrels. Now this is, largely, a go-as-you-please journal for humanitarians; people can accept or reject what they choose, but, really, they must not expect us to stop the machine in order to discuss whether a fly-wheel is made of cast-iron, or wroughtiron, or steel! We can't all agree unless we submerge such minds as we possess and become automata. However much perfect agreement may be desirable in some things, especially when pitching into the enemy, a few brief years of work in the humane cause has taught me that the divine right of thinking for yourself and hang what the other chap thinks is most strenuously held by the large body of our friends and co-workers. And then, perfect consistency is a rock over which many folk stumble.

A lady correspondent, dating from Kilburn, deprecates the suggestion that dogs, to be put to death quickly and painlessly, should be shot. She suggests, instead, that poison should be used. Well, it is a matter of experience; having seen both dogs and cats poisoned, and having seen dogs shot, I should infinitely prefer, were I a dog, to be despatched by the latter means. There is something nobler in being shot. Poison reeks to me of two horrors-suicide and assassination. No! "Let me like a soldier fall." I am sure the bullet is the more merciful.

Another lady, writing from Cambridge, draws my attention to a letter in the Morning Post concerning injured horses. It appears that a horse which slipped in Northumberland Avenue smashed one of its legs badly, and was permitted to lay in agony for four hours, occasionally hours, occasionally struggling terribly, before a district knacker could destroy it. For my part, whether I were permitted by the police to do so or not, if an animal of mine was in similar plight I should beg, borrow, or steal a revolver and shoot the creature without as much as asking any policeman's permission. The poor horse in question suffered terribly whilst certain

red tape regulations were being carried out at the hands of "Robert," a veterinary surgeon who had to certify that the animal ought to be killed, and a district knacker who did the deed, assisted by the usual gaping London crowd. Such a scene as the one described ought not to be possible where common sense runs yoked with ordinary humanity.

Three correspondents in County Dublin have complained that they cannot get the Animals' Friend without very great difficulty, because the booksellers or newsagents to whom they apply tell them that they never heard of it, that they can't get it, that it is out of print, that it is dead, that it was never born, and that nobody knows anything at all about it. This is the sort of complaint we frequently get from different parts of the United Kingdom. All I can say is that I have reason to believe the Animals' Friend was born, and is alive and kicking, that it is very far from dead, that it is to be had, and that your bookseller and newsagent will take particular pains to get it if you tell him that a continuance of your custom depends upon his getting it regularly for you. But first of all tell him that it is published by Messrs. George Bell & Sons, York Street, Covent Garden, London, and that Mr. E. W. Allen, 4, Ave Maria Lane, E.C., is the City Agent. Your newsagent's London collector will not have the slightest difficulty in procuring the current or back numbers at any time by applying to either one of these firms. We have forms of subscription which we will send to our friends who may be anxious to obtain new subscribers for us.

While I think of it may I say once for all that we do not pay for contributions to this magazine. The work in connection with it is largely honorary. I must, therefore, request that poetry, for which payment is desired, should not be sent, as we have on our staff quite a number of able poets, and we have not much room for poetry at the best of times. Correspondents who address letters to us for publication should bear in mind that they must write only on one side of the paper, and that they must be as brief as happiness.

A friendly critic writes from Wickham Market, and after complimenting us upon the exceptionally good character of our illustrations, proceeds to criticise, possibly with scientific justice, the Nightjar depicted in our May issue, also the Nightingale. My correspondent, probably, is not aware how very few artists are able to accurately draw studies of birds. There is a fortune

awaiting an expert in this direction. Hundreds of third and fourth-rate artists take a great amount of time to produce what is often a most disappointing result. With regard to the Cuckoo which was meant for a nightingale, Lady Campbell, Miss Edith Carrington, and many others have been "getting at me" ever since it appeared. Mr. Salt, of the Humanitarian League, suggested a solution of the puzzle. He said possibly it was the Cuckoo apostrophising the Nightingale, only the latter was supposed to be in the distance. The "badly stuffed cuckoo" to which my correspondent refers to as being put for ward as a nightingale had, through an oversight, been permitted, like the original bird itself, to oust the nightingale from her proper place on that page. These mistakes will occur, but I should not have referred to this particular one had it not been for the pertinacity of friendly critics who have conspired to depose me from my position of infallibility. Now, if you please, don't ever mention that cuckoo in my presence again.

An impatient reader bids me remember that I have not yet supplied the promised information relative to the means by which kid is obtained for manufacture into gloves. May I say that we shall publish something concerning this in our next issue.

May I suggest that you send a copy of this to your doctor, carefully marking page 219?

I now beg to produce for your edification, my dear Gabrielle, a list of the many friends who, during the past few months, have voluntarily sent us contributions to the Sustentation Fund which helps to keep this magazine on the move. I cannot thank them sufficiently for their constant support, but I do ask them to believe that their kindly aid is as grateful "as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land," and greatly consoles and strengthens those who, frequently amid slander, malevolence and abuse, attempt to do their part in the warfare against cruelty and oppression. "Naught shall make us rue" when we have the support of so many good friends whom we know in the spirit though we have never met them in the flesh.

And now believe me,

Your sincere and faithful

EDITOR.

SUSTENTATION FUND.

Mrs. F. J. Winter Wood

0

R. A. A. Wright, Esq.

Dr. Garth Wilkinson

W. J. Wilson, Esq.

Miss E. A. Wright..

Miss D. Yardley

SIR-It is with great pleasure that I learn

from Miss Ormerod's letter her resolve not to ignore or condemn birds utterly, though I must reluctantly repeat that she gives to no bird whatever its proper place and importance in reference to agriculture, while she altogether condemns the sparrow.

My honest conviction after reading Miss Ormerod's report for 1896 (and it seems in this respect to differ little from the others) was that the widespread and important ministry of birds was ignored by her. I did not say that she never mentioned them.

Though birds are casually mentioned here and there at long intervals, as a secondary and subsidiary help, the fact that without them man could not exist on this earth at all is nowhere brought forward, and it is startling to find Miss Ormerod permitting an allusion to rooks and hawks as "vermin, which we generally shoot in Spring," to stain her pages without comment or rebuke. (See Report for 1896, p. 16.)

From the whole tone of her reports any impartial reader must gather that Miss Ormerod prefers the use of Paris green, oil of vitriol, gas lime, greasy bands, and expensive human labour, to the cheap, effective and wholesome work of birds. And the most indefatigable, the most ubiquitous, the most hardy of all, the SPARROW, who is scavenger, insect eater and weed-destroyer in one, is altogether a sinner in her eyes.

I need not repeat the arguments which I used in the article which unfortunately gave Miss Ormerod offence, a thing which I deeply regret, since nobody can respect and admire her talents and energy more than I do. Those arguments seemed to prove that the sparrow cannot be exterminated without danger to the community. I will place before your readers, as briefly as I can, the opinions of a few celebrated ornithologists, agriculturists, fruitgrowers, etc., etc., which differ from that held by Miss Ormerod :

Mr. JOSEPH WOTHERSPOON, the celebrated fruitgrower, encourages sparrows to take up their quarters with him, even going so far as to make holes in the outside of his vinery walls, so that the sparrows may build their nests and rear their families. Birds bred on places like this, Mr. Wotherspoon says, live there constantly upon their natural food, destroying with absolute certainty, destructive grubs and caterpillars; in proof of which he points to the continual stream of parent birds carrying food out of the garden to their young in the nests. At the same time he also shows that his trees and plants suffer less from the ravages of grubs and insects than those of his neighbours, where the sparrow is persecuted and destroyed.

Mr. ROACH SMITH, a sound naturalist, says :Nature has formed the bird's eye for detecting insects where the eye of man is useless. Wholly destroy the birds and the fruit is wholly destroyed. At Hartlip, some years ago, in the face of truths and facts, the sparrows were exterminated entirely as being injurious. The orchards were immediately covered with the webs of innumerable caterpillars,

and with other insects, and in two years it was calculated that over one thousand pounds were lost in consequence of the insane slaughtering."

The late Rev. F. O. MORRIS, the noted ornithologist, wrote to the Times as follows :-" While taking a walk in the spring of 1874, the gardener asked me to go into the garden to see the state of the fruit trees, caused by insects. Although he had two women and a boy employed to destroy the insects, many of the trees were denuded of every leaf. The cause I pointed out, and advised him to destroy no more birds (for I knew he had killed some) but to sow his seeds a little deeper, and employ a boy to prevent them eating his peas, etc. Some ten days after, I saw him again, when he told me that some sparrows from the old hall adjoining had found out the pests, and had done more in clearing the trees in a few days than the people employed had in as many weeks, and that for the future instead of killing sparrows as enemies, he would do what he could to protect them. But how is it," adds Mr. Morris, "that the sparrow is found in winter with grains of corn inside him? What is the history of that same corn? It has previously been partaken of by the horse. Otherwise it has been picked up in stubble fields where every one knows there is plenty to be met with in late autumn and winter."

The Rev. M. C. H. BIRD states :-"I have seen sparrows taking caterpillars from cabbages, searching them day after day I have also seen them take garden whites (butterflies) on the wing. On gooseberry trees later on in the year I have seen them take the larvæ of the gooseberry sawfly, and of the currant moth from currant trees.'

The Rev. T. WOOD, as careful and accurate a naturalist as his renowned fat er, says: "I have been told by a clerical friend, who was for many years resident in Norfolk, that at one time he was the only inhabitant of his parish who protected the sparrow. The neighbouring farmers and gardeners persecuted it without mercy, as farmers and gardeners will. He, himself not only protected but encouraged the bird, allowed it free access to his garden, and refused to allow such as took refuge therein to be molested or disturbed. The sparrows took advantage of the indulgence, and made the garden their principal stronghold, and yet the crop of fruit, year after year, was the finest in the neighbourhood. When the surrounding district was ravaged by insects his garden alone escaped."

There is, however, no doubt that sparrows congregate where food is accumulated by man, and prefer feasting on it to laboriously searching for morsels far and wide. But is a man to fold his hands and allow a sparrow to outwit him? Surely a man's brain may circumvent a bird's! Surely he can command energy, skill, and the small expenditure needful to scare sparrows from his storehouse and standing corn! In doing this he throws a sprat to catch a herring-as it is only during a short period of the year that any substantial mischief is done, while all the rest of the year the sparrow is working for his benefit.

On

this point Mr. Hawley remarks, "I have waited upon three of our most eminent and enlightened farmers in this district for their opinion on this subject and they agree upon one point, that six weeks is the very outside (but two of them think a month nearer the truth) that sparrows do in any way injure the agriculturist.

To one who, like myself, is in the habit of

watching sparrows at work in the fields, allotments, and market gardens near a town, where other wild birds hardly ever venture, carrying grubs to their young or feeding themselves on the most baleful foes to mankind, it is amazing to find such insects as the cabbage butterfly, currant moth, leaf-rolling caterpillars, saw-flies, and house-flies (the grubs of which feed in filth near human habitations) mentioned, without allusion to their only sure and safe remedy, in a sparrow's beak. Condemnation of the sparrow only shows how fatally unreliable are results obtained by the system of killing birds in order to examine the contents of their stomachs ;a system respectable from its antiquity, though scarcely dictated by commonsense ;-for, will one individual's inside give any just clue to that of his neighbour? Unless every sparrow in the world were shot we could not decide what these birds, as a race, ate. We must be content, then, to accept the evidence of our senses, that of our eyes fixed on the living birds in the fields, unless we execute the sparrows first and try them after.

The sparrow, if permitted, will turn his attention to the standing corn, and to accumulated stores, but it would be wiser to scare him thence than to take his life. He will cost the master in whose fields he works something, of course, but can Paris Green be had gratis? It costs eighteenpence a pound retail, and must be used with precaution, on the score of human health, and that of animals. Do women and children collect grubs for nothing? In one instance Miss Ormerod herself questions whether the total loss of a certain crop would not be less expensive than paying for the "hand-picking" of insects.

To what a pass have we brought ourselves by the idiotic persecution of birds! If the sparrow follows suit, ruin must befall. I think that the sparrows must have sent an ambassador to plead their cause, for two mornings ago we were waked by a sound as of a child tossing light pebbles against one of the windows in my house. Presently the head and shoulders of a house-sparrow appeared; he was pecking vigorously at a daddy-long-legs seen by him through the pane, and he seemed greatly exasperated because his beak wouldn't go through. The number of these harmful flies destroyed by sparrows in autumn must be fabulous; I have watched them at intervals through an entire day, fluttering over the grass in flocks and pouncing on the daddies by dozens.

We cannot destroy the present balance of Nature and create in in its place a new, and it is unwise, and more than unwise, to interfere unnecessarily and in any great degree with that which already exists. It is mad and senseless in the extreme to set our own puny intelligence against the ineffable wisdom of Nature, and to strike with our feeble might and feeble weapons against a Power which we can neither control nor overcome."

I am, sir, yours truly,

EDITH CARRINGTON.