13 MARCH 1953, Page 5

To the problems which have hitherto baffled science—cancer and the

common cold—it seems that starlings must be added. Whether in Trafalgar Square or round the Birmingham Art Gallery they jeer in their tens of thousands at the totally ineffec- tive attempts to eliminate them. They are apparently inelimin- able. Poisoned grain would no doubt do it, but the Chairman of the Praesidium of the Union of Starling Socialist Republics would argue that that was unsporting. I should agree with him entirely.