Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/228

170 the best kept "reserves" for all birds, though their owners rear pheasants and shoot game and wild-fowl. The naturalist-sportsman often is the best bird protector.

All sportsmen, unfortunately, are not naturalists, and many a one cares little about the ethics of game preservation; he wants his pleasure, and it never enters his head that the means by which he obtains it may be other than right. The humanitarian roundly condemns the preservation of game, and indeed all sport, so far as the word is applied to pastimes which involve the slaying of animals, as immoral. His arguments are not unsound, but there are fair replies to which he usually turns a deaf ear; we must go to the humane sportsman or the scientific humanitarian to obtain a broad-minded view of the rights and wrongs of sport, or, which is an important point, of the wisdom of preserving a particular species for sporting purposes.

We are all hereditary sportsmen. From those far distant ancestors who had to slay or starve we inherit this love of the chase. In spite of advanced civilisation we are yet children of the savage, each born into the world uncivilised, primeval. Cruelty, alas! seems to be childish human nature; the child is cruel until it is taught otherwise; therefore, if unconscious, it cannot be immoral cruelty. Innocent thoughtlessness. and maybe a thirst after knowledge and sensation. prompts the infant to "pull the pussy's tail to make it yowl for fun," or rip legs and wings from flies upon the pane. If the child has been reproved, learnt what pain means, and repeats experiments in private, delighting in the torments of its victims, it is then cruel. Once the larger knowledge has been acquired the question is entirely different; it is then a subject for thought for the theologian and psychologist; it may be for action by the medical man or criminologist. The habits of the domestic dog and cat provide, to some