Page:Bird Haunts and Nature Memories - Thomas Coward (Warne, 1922).pdf/254

194 is a useless monster—the wonder alike of the learned and the layman, and an awful warning as an example of amateur legislation."

In order that the sentimentalist might be propitiated, such birds as robin and dunnock received protection, and a small fine, which included costs, was imposed for an offence against common birds and those which were threatened with extinction. The collector smiled, took the risk, and if caught cheerfully paid, knowing well that such fine was a minute discount off the price which he could obtain. So, in a few years the Act died, and the better framed Act of 1880 was passed, but its scheduled birds were not sufficiently protected, and in a few years so many amended clauses were added that it became necessary to describe the measure as "the Acts"; no one but the lawyer was any the wiser or better off, and few lawyers found it worth while to study the complicated problem. Until protective legislation is framed by scientific, unbiassedunbiased [sic] students of bird life, who ignore the plea of the sentimentalist and weigh with caution the enthusiasm of the economist, the depletion of bird life—that is, of the species we most wish to preserve—will continue.

The law has failed to reach and check the depredations of one class of criminal (it is justifiable to use the term for any law-breaker), the greedy collector and his agents, those who supply him. The professional collector, the man who trades in specimens, is constantly blamed for the damage he does, for his looting is wholesale, but he would very soon turn his attention to some other method of gaining a living were he not patronised; it is the hoarding private collector, the man who pretends to be, but so seldom is, scientific, who is really responsible.

It must, however, be admitted, as even Newton was forced to admit, that the Acts, in spite of their