Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/248

190 seemed to think. But he was not content with that; he continued by attacking the Grey Seals Protection Act of 1914, and, though an Irishman, he was absolutely ignorant of his own native fauna. "Its object is to protect the species of seal known as the Halichœrnus grypus" (this is the spelling as it appears in Hansard). "I do not know what we are protecting when it is so described. I am advised that there is no such thing in the waters of this country as the Halichœrnus grypus. It is a variety that is found only in Scandinavia. It sometimes swims over as far as Denmark. The humour of this legislation is that there is no such thing in this country to protect." Comment is unnecessary.

Those who have followed since 1880 the repeated muddling alterations, amendments, and orders of the Wild Birds Protection Acts must realise that the passing of laws alone will accomplish nothing. The law must be backed, and backed with determination. by public opinion. Then the constable will feel that he is supported in his efforts, that the Bench is behind and not against him. It is true that many of the officers require instruction; they are not ornithologists, and may easily make mistakes about the identity of species; it is equally true that our magistrates, supposed to be educated men, are frequently more ignorant than the constabulary. There are, of course, magistrates and magistrates, and we cannot expect that all should at sight be able to tell the difference between a protected and unprotected bird, but that is no excuse for doubting the word of a constable. I have in mind one local case. A bird-catcher was summoned for trapping protected redpolls, and his defence was that the birds were not redpolls but "jitties"; the constable, a Cheshire man, asserted, quite correctly, that "jitty" was a local name for the redpoll, but the magistrate, somewhat sharply, demanded how he knew, gave the accused the