Small netting mesh cloches can be used to keep pests and pets off seeds etc., too.
Much has been done in keeping out the insects by fine wire netting placed on the windows and the doors of houses, especially in the railwaymens cottages.
The various varieties of rolled plate-glass are now produced for some purposes with a reinforcement of wire netting which is embedded in the mass of the glass.
Bituminous coal, natural gas and oil abound in the vicinity; the river provides excellent water-power; the borough is a manufacturing centre of considerable importance, its products including iron and steel bridges, boilers, steam drills, carriages, saws, files, axes, shovels, wire netting, stoves, glass-ware, scales, chemicals, pottery, cork, decorative tile, bricks and typewriters.
In these districts and others the number has become much reduced, owing doubtless in part to the fatal practice of catching the birds just before or during the breeding-season; but perhaps the strongest cause of their growing scarcity is the constant breaking-up of waste lands, and the extirpation of weeds (particularly of the order Compositae) essential to the improved system of agriculture; for in many parts of Scotland, East Lothian for instance, where goldfinches were once as plentiful as sparrows, they are now only rare stragglers, and yet there they have not been thinned by netting.
