*- * * * We share some of our birds
with South Africa. It seems that we share also one of the less desirable mammals. Cecil Rhodes did in the Cape what the Duke of Bedford did at Woburn, but went a step farther. He imported both the grey and the red squirrel. The grey has now been condemned, and a price put on his head, in defence of seeds and fruit (and incidentally, he was condemned a hundred years ago for excesses in a similar diet in South America). It is alleged that the local acorn crop, used for feeding pigs, is much diminished and that the very existence of the unique and lovely silver tree is endangered. As my correspondent " F. C. K." writes, " the balance of Nature is very delicately poised." The starlings which also Rhodes introduced to South Africa are now reckoned among the worst enemies of the fruit farms that Rhodes himself established.
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