a cheerful chirrup.  At certain seasons scores congregate on a branch, perching in a row, so closely compact that their breasts show as a continuous band of white.  When one leaves his place to catch an insect, the others close up the ranks and dress the line, and on returning, wrangle and scold as he may, he needs must take an outside place.  Let a bush fire be started, and flocks of wood-swallows whirl and circle along the flanks of the circling smoke, taking flying insects on the wing, or deftly pick “thin, high-elbowed creatures,” scuttling up tree-trunks out of the way of the flames.  Those were the marauders who confounded anticipations of a comfortable livelihood in the decent calling of an apiarist.  They devoured bees by the hundred every day.  Every hive paid dreadful toll to them, for they found food so plentiful, and with so little exertion, that they made the vicinity of the hives a permanent abiding place.  For a brief season I found myself confronted by a problem.  I had to apply my own favourite theories and arguments to myself and weigh against them practical advantages.  Honey was plentiful and, given that the bees were protected against voracious enemies, might have been stored in marketable quantities.  But was I not bound by honour as well as sentiment to protect the birds?  Was not my coming hither due to a certain extent to a wish for the preservation of bird-life?  Was there not in my presence an implied warranty to that effect?  Had not the island since my occupancy become a sanctuary, a city of refuge, a safe abiding place, a kingdom where all the birds of the air—­save tyrants and cannibals were welcomed with gladness and enthusiasm?  Had I not warned others of the dreadful consequences that would befall any disturbance of the sacred air by so much as the unauthorised report of a gun?  How then was I to deal out justice to the defenceless bees that I had hurried hither, willy-nilly, without consideration of their likes and dislikes and their multitudinous descendants?  How protect my investment in apiarist plant?  How maintain the stock of honey, white, golden and tawny brown, excellent, wholesome delicious food, and still preserve the natural rights, the privileges of the birds?  Had not the birds the right of prior occupancy and other legitimate claims, in addition to sentimental demands upon my conscience?  Not only, too were the birds beautiful to look upon and of engaging habits; not only had they become companionable and trustful; not only were they among the primeval features of the island that I was so eager to leave unspotted from the world; but they were eminently useful in the work of keeping within bounds the rampant host of insects to which mankind is in the habit of applying the term injurious.