The best way of keeping Starlings away from _high_ cherry trees, that I have seen, is fixing a long narrow flag to a strong top branch. Large flocks of them resort to cowfolds, where the stock are all night, and before these are let out the birds are there seeking for larvæ and worms in the dried dung, perching now and anon on the backs of the cattle, chattering low all the time. They rid trees of caterpillars, and the turnip fields, where they have been known to clear these of “fly”; also to visit field peas that were infected with aphides and do good work there; and they devour great numbers of Daddy-longlegs. Waterton,--that past-master in the art of observing and chronicling the doings of birds, wrote: “There is not a bird in all Great Britain more harmless than the Starling: still, it has to suffer persecution, and is often doomed to see its numbers thinned by the hand of wantonness or error. The author of ‘Journal of a Naturalist’ observed a pair of Starlings having young ones for several days, and he wrote, ‘It appears probable that this pair, in conjunction, do not travel less than 50 miles a day, visiting and feeding their young about 140 times, which, consisting of five in number, and admitting only one to be fed each time, every bird must receive in this period twenty portions of food.” In 1891 twelve farmers, replying to Miss Ormerod’s question as to which kinds of birds were specially useful in destroying caterpillars, all replied in favour of the Starling. Now what, after all, matters a little fruit taken from private gardens in view of all this good work done. And as to the professional fruit grower, it will pay him to employ a boy or two during a short season of the year, to keep birds off his trees. * * * * * Sir Herbert Maxwell, who writes on the whole in favour of Starlings, and remarks truly that all naturalists are agreed that the good they do outweighs the evil, says that “from many a dovecote the legitimate occupants have been expelled by the intrusion of these irrepressible creatures.” And Waterton wrote, “The farmer complains that it sucks his pigeons’ eggs, and when the gunner and his assembly wish, the keeper is ordered to close the holes of entrance to the dovecot overnight, and the next morning three or four dozen of Starlings are captured to be shot.... Alas! these poor Starlings had merely resorted to it for shelter and protection, and were in no way responsible for the fragments of egg-shells which were strewed on the floor.... The rat and the weasel were the real destroyers,” etc. * * * * *