BULL-FINCHES AND APPLE-BLOSSOM.
[To TUB EDITOII OF TILE " BPECTAT011.1 Sin,—I wonder whether your contributor, the writer of the interesting article on the plague of voles (in the Spectator of April 8th), could give me any information about bull- finches and apple-blossom ? I have been assured by local gardeners that I shall have no apples unless the bull- finches are destroyed, as they eat the blossoms. Some they do eat unquestionably, but I am sceptical as to the wisdom of destroying the little birds. Time will prove whether I am right, but I want the subject ventilated, and therefore apply to you. For myself, I am willing enough to spare the birds and lose the apples, but all the world is not of my way of thinking; and believing as I do that Nature regulates these things in the long-run better than Art, I wish to give the birds the benefit of your contributor's protection. With a short anecdote in support of my theory, I
will conclude. A friend of mine was shortly going to give up a small farm which he had been working in Wales, and wishing to sell his horses as soon as possible, ordered his man- servant to sow the wheat at once. The man expostulated, saying that it was too early to be of any use, that none of the neighbouring farmers were going to sow their seed for some time to come, and that therefore the birds would congregate on my friend's fields and eat the seed clean. However, my friend insisted on having the seed sown, and sure enough the rooks appeared, busy in hundreds all over the fields. What was the surprise, therefore, of the farmers, and of my friend also, when harvest-time brought to his fields the finest crop of wheat ever remembered in the neighbourhood !—I am, Sir, &c., A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS.
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