In older days I have travelled again and again along
one particular stretch of the Great North Road in autumn and been accompanied the whole way by the song either of the yellow-hammer or the corn-bunting. To-day the same stretch is almost silent, except for the occasional husky croak of the corn-bunting on the telegraph wires. And the partridges are fewer ; but whether this is due to the absence of dust or the diminution of the stubbles I do not know. On the railways dust is still to be found and it is my experience that more game birds are killed there than in earlier days. They are killed not directly by the trains but in the flurry of escape by the overhead wires ; or so I account for the dead birds I have found close to the fence on the top of cuttings. We could probably deliberately attract birds to our gardens by giving them dust baths.
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