100 years ago in Country Life

May 13, 1922

AFTER years abroad I am struck with the absence of bullfinches; I see none in the orchards and gardens of Kent where I live. How they once added to their beauty and gaiety! In discussion as to the good or harm done by birds to fruit, I notice that the bullfinch has no friends. A fruit grower who experimented with some success in regulating his crops through the years told me that it was not now held to be of much value for strengthening the following year’s crop to thin the fruit, but that it was necessary to thin the blossom—an impossible labour he confessed. Might not the bullfinch by its supposed havoc in the blossom be, after all, rendering a mutual service to the horticulturist and to the lover of birds and of beauty?—h. Baker