The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-12-14
GAsaE BIRDS AND THEIR ENE-
 MES.

It used to be told of ti1e late Dr. Par ISer that, in the feryor of a man anx- ious to add example to preceot, he once started to keep fowls--only giving up the experiment when he found his eggs cost him, on an average, one and nine pence each. The game bird, and the shooting of it, are an even more expen= sye hobby The market price of birds is flo criterion of their cost to tine own CT of the estate whence they come; it is whispered that many of them never fall victims to guns righteously pointed, be- ing sent to market by individuals not included in the house party or friendly with the gamekeeper, who, indeed, in an unchristian mood regards them as among the yermin with which the beats are cursed, and cannot see any justice i'll a law which will not permit him to kill them down. It has been sometimes argued that the keeping down of yer min destroys the balance of nature, and is prejudicial to the Well-being of game. In the exercise of a tedious and difficult profession, the ganekeeper has many evils to contend with and many ene- 5 asiAEo atO #GO1tlpcts 41Qol VI ttiGGC arc IllT cluded in 'ttfle balance of nature" state of economic nieety which the gannekeeper fails entirely to appreciate. With him, everything which is not game, and which has accordingly no right on the beat, Is vernlin. There is no doubt that on the moors where the ground is well shot over it is proper to keep down the verrnin, and rigidly; or the result would promptly be the disap- pearance of that very balance of nature which theorists talk about. It is equal ly true that the keeper destroys as ver- min many friends to his beat, and in many more instances he mistakes the turnip lantern for ghost, slaughtering hosts which, if not friends, are scarcely enemies. An old sportsman and natu- ralist raised his moor in three years from fifteen brace each beat the open ing day to forty-fiye a day for the first ten days shooting, by observing two rules; always killing the single old cock grouse whenever he could, and keeping on good terms with the shepherds. The latter rule is perhaps 8 little obscure until it is remembered that there is no yermin so destructive on 8 moor as an ill-fed collie; he will eat old birds on the nests, and bolt eggs and young whole Tn dealing with grouse, particularly, the keeper has so many other eonspirators to worry him that he would be we'll saved the shepherds collie. Grouse are periodically afflicted with disease which comes nlysteriously and ravages all ranges, where the birds are many and where they are few; no cause can be assigned, no remedy invented. Before this plague the keeper stands in awe, aeknoWledging, like Pharaehs magi- clans before Moses, the finger of God. Grouse, too, more than other game birds, seem to suffer from those other plagues before which the keeper does net stand abashed but which, often enough, he is almost as impotent to remedy, The fayorite food of the kite IS grouse; on one occasion the remains of no fewer than thirty grouse were seen under a Scotch fir, the home of one family of kites This is terrible tri- hnte, when it is reeolIected that the kite ievies 2 further heavy toll on rahits and hafss, peewits, curlew, duck and pigeons.
 The hawks, the special objects of de- testation on a beat, are not really such