Along some of our loveliest valleys, such as the Lea
Valley, and across favourite landscapes are now being erected the ornate gallows that are to carry cheap electricity into our country places. The benefit should be great ; and it would be as wrong-headed to protest against the eyesore as it was for Ruskin to tilt at railways. The posts are ugly, never- theless, and introduce a danger. They will kill a good many birds. Telegraph wires still do much damage in this way ;
and though the Post Office is very ready to help, I would utter a plea for many more warnings on the wires. If wires are well corked, the birds avoid them, and come to learn them. Even uncorked they kill birds only over certain reaches which happen to coincide with lines of twilight flight. The fear is that the new wires will prevail in more populous bird-haunts than the telegraph wires ; and as the posts are at a wide interval, not less than 130 yards, the wires will be the less suspected.
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