Abstract
A THOROUGHLY useful book by an expert naturalist, dealing with mammals and birds as useful or injurious to British agricultural operations, and holding the scales fairly and evenly. Nature, if left alone, strikes a working balance between every animal and its natural enemies, but man's unconscious efforts usually load one scale. The nature of the agriculture is an important matter. Starlings, for example, “do great service in a pastoral country, in a corn-growing land they do great damage”. We hate them among our fruit, but it is possible that they, like many other ‘pests’ are, on a balance, really beneficial on account of the vast numbers of slugs, snails, and insects they consume. Certainly we would suppose that stoats and weasels, so hated by the gamekeeper, by their destruction of rats, mice, and even rabbits, save stored corn and growing crops of many times the value of the occasional poultry that they kill.
Beasts and Birds as Farm Pests.
By Prof. James Ritchie. Pp. xii + 270. (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1931.) 12s. 6d. net.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 51 print issues and online access
$199.00 per year
only $3.90 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Beasts and Birds as Farm Pests . Nature 130, 329–330 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/130329a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/130329a0