feeding-ground, and safe roosting and nesting places; their food is also more abundant and easily found; their small size, which renders them inconspicuous, gives them safety; and, finally, they are very much more adaptive than large birds. It is not at all probable that the red-legged partridge will ever drive out our own bird, a contingency which some have feared. That would be a misfortune, for we do not wish to change one bird for another, or to lose any species we now possess, but to have a greater variety. We are better off with two partridges than we were with one, even if the invader does not afford such good sport nor such delicate eating. They exist side by side, and compete with each other; but such competition is not necessarily destructive to either. On the contrary, it acts and re-acts healthily and to the improvement of both. It is a fact that in small islands, very far removed from the mainland, where the animals have been exempt from all foreign competition--that is, from the competition of casual colonists--when it does come it proves, in many cases, fatal to them. Fortunately, this country's large size and nearness to the mainland has prevented any such fatal crystallization of its organisms as we see in islands like St. Helena. That any English species would be exterminated by foreign competition is extremely unlikely; whether we introduce exotic birds or not, the only losses we shall have to deplore in the future will, like those of the past, be directly due to our own insensate action in slaying every rare and beautiful thing with powder and shot. From the introduction of exotic species nothing is to be feared, but much to be hoped.