Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/246

188 late to save the large copper? Yet these and many other creatures have passed but a few years, comparatively speaking, before our time, and others are passing now. We, who look at the question with what we may term scientific sympathy, mourn the loss. It is because we know that within recent years species after species has vanished, and that we know that man's rapacity is in many cases responsible, that we are so anxious to check his evil influences whilst yet there is time.

There are two methods of stopping or at any rate retarding destruction—legislation and personal influence; each has its place, and as a rule one without the other fails. Protective laws cannot be passed without the strong use of the economic and humanitarian arguments, and the last has often failed to gain a hearing. Laws, too, are useless unless the sympathy of legislators, and of the public servants whose duty it is to enforce them, is strong and constant. Our House of Commons is filled by men whose tenure of office depends too much upon topical political issues for it to spend much time upon questions that are only appreciated by the minority of voters. Thus, if we get a good sympathetic naturalist in the House, and he advocates some useful protective measure, the chances are against his success; his Bill is crowded out by matters which appear more imminent but yet may have transitory importance, matters which appeal to the immediate interests, usually pecuniary, of the majority. The struggle for the Plumage Bill is a recent case in point. It was through the indifference of the majority of members who nominally supported the Bill, men of all shades of party, that for so long it was impossible to combat the small but powerful interests of the plumage trade. Time alone will show whether in these days of economic struggle there is sufficient true sympathy with the intentions of the Bill to secure its legal enforcement.