The Bullfinch has been causing much dissension in and near an East Anglian district where I have lately been staying. A net had been placed over the gooseberry bushes to protect the blossom, and much indignation was caused early one morning by the sight of three lusty Bullfinches within the meshes, and a quantity of promising blossom on the ground. “There would be no gooseberries whatever, this season; it was positively unbearable; sentiment was utterly misplaced.” The three birds were caught by the hand within the net, two were put in a cage in the stable, and one was exposed in a small cage on the top of the garden wall to attract others to the like fate. The gardeners were inexorable. Madame was irritated by the sight of the rifled twigs. “And all last Sunday was spent, by the wife and me,” said the gardener, “shying stones at the rascals among the trees in our own garden.” The next day a market-gardener shot no less than six Bullfinches on his grounds. As a rule, my friends on this estate, are extremely good to birds, and they attract them by placing breeding boxes, and supplying food in winter; but these sturdy rascals find no quarter. I pleaded hard for them, but, I fear, without result. The gooseberry blossom was certainly nearly all destroyed, but it was in a quest for the destructive larvæ of the winter moths, which make their appearance in the early spring and eat the not yet expanded buds. A fruit grower has stated that he allowed the Bullfinches to eat as much as they pleased; the crop of fruit has usually been as good as if the birds had not done any disbudding, and when, by a rare chance, the trees had borne no fruit at all, he knew it was because the trees required clearing, and the next year the crop would be all the finer. In some cases the tree appears to be entirely disbudded, and still fruit has appeared. It is only for a short period that the Bullfinches visit the fruit trees. During the rest of the year they eat the seeds of harmful weeds--dock, thistle, groundsel, plantain; and one authority states that a single Bullfinch has been known to devour 238 seeds of the common spear-thistle in twenty minutes! A writer in the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society say that he has seen “a small party of these birds eagerly devouring the seeds of the large sow-thistle.” A little fruit more or less in a season, in one’s own domain, is a small matter in comparison with the vast amount of noxious weeds destroyed on our fields. * * * * *