NATURE'S BALANCE.
I believe that every single special definite inquiry into the feeding habits of British land birds (certain fishing birds are perhaps an exception) has enlarged the proof of their utility, even where it has shown up their parallel destructive- ness. Rooks and sparrows, for example, have multiplied excessively, and now do great harm. Let us preserve our birds in order to preserve the balance of nature ; but it is well to remember that the balance depends on vermin as well as birds. Many years ago I saw some account of an estate in the Home Counties where the polecats and stoats consider- ably exceeded the rats. To-day the polecats are killed out. The stoats are very few. They have vanished along with many of the bigger hawks. We have, in this regard, left the coast clear for the most destructive of all the vermin, at least, to the farmer. And the rat is more than a destroyer. It is a disease-carrier. This alteration of the balance has happened more or less recently. In one Midland district the last polecat was seen in or about the year 1879—just about the time when the agricultural depression began to be serious.
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