Some of our birds are annually diminishing in numbers; others have been entirely destroyed, or no longer visit the shores of Britain. The increase of our population, inclosure, and clearage of rude and open places, and the drainage of marshy lands, added to the noise of our fire-arms, have driven them away, or rendered their former breeding and feeding stations no longer eligible to many, especially to the waders and aquatic birds. The great Swan Pool, near the city of Lincoln, on which I have seen at one time forty of these majestic creatures sailing in all their dignity, is, I am told, no longer a pool; the extensive marshes of Glastonbury, which have afforded me the finest snipe shooting, are now luxuriant corn farms; and multitudes of other cases of such subversions of harbor for birds are within memory. An ornithological list made no longer ago than the days of Elizabeth would present the names of multitudes now aliens to our shores. The nightingale was common with us here a few years past; the rival songs of many were heard every evening during the season, and in most of our shady lanes we were saluted by the harsh warning note of the parent to its young; but from the assiduity of bird-catchers, or some local change that we are not sensible of, a solitary vocalist or so now only delights our evening walk. The egg of this bird is rather singularly colored, and not commonly to be obtained. Our migrating small birds incur from natural causes great loss in their transits; birds of prey, adverse winds, and fatigue, probably reduce their numbers nearly as much as want, and the severity of the winter season, does those that remain; and in some summers the paucity of such birds is strikingly manifest. Even the hardy rook is probably not found in such numbers as formerly, its haunts having been destroyed or disturbed by the felling of trees, in consequence of the increased value of timber, and the changes in our manners and ideas. Rooks love to build near the habitation of man: but their delight, the long avenue, to caw as it were in perspective from end to end, is no longer the fashion; and the poor birds have been dispersed to settle on single distant trees, or in the copse, and are captured and persecuted. “Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,” a modern Zephalinda would scarcely find now to anticipate with dread. In many counties very few rookeries remain, where once they were considered as a necessary appendage, and regularly pointed out the abbey, the hall, the court-house, and the grange.