Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/233

Rh glory of his park, and be tolerated the otter in his osier beds, and the badger in his sand-hills. The arch-enemy of wild birds was the non-resident shooting tenant, and, worse still, the syndicate—hateful word and hateful thing—of shooting tenants. The shooting tenant had hardly any bowels of compassion; the syndicate had none at all. They valued the land chiefly or wholly according to the number of head of game; and dividing the entire animal world into game and vermin, bade the game keeper, in the words of King Lear, 'Kill, kill, kill!

On the shooting tenant's "big day" the unskilled guests blaze away, maim, and seldom kill; they snatch the gun from their loader, loose off, and snatch again, while around them lie the wounded, struggling victims of their slipshod shots, if we may use that term. When the drive ends the puffed-up host strides between the rows of slain like an Eastern potentate after a victory. Sport has degenerated into massacre; the butcher deserves the chastisement we mete to the lad who slays the harmless toad. How different from the other type! Roosevelt, an example of the better sportsman, declared: "I love hunting still, but slaughter is abhorrent to me." What really matters is the attitude of the game preserver towards the animal world; he is no true sportsman who regards everything which is not his game as vermin.

Game preservation, the artificial protection afforded to certain selected species, is unbeloved by many naturalists, but they only consider one aspect, the destruction of vermin. To provide a plentiful head of game it is essential to hedge the favoured bird or mammal with safeguards, to give it seclusion and security from its natural foes, to protect it from those circumstances which would normally reduce its numbers to the limit allowed by nature. An introduced species seldom if ever finds a groove exactly to fit; if food is plentiful and enemies