Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/39

Rh securing a shot was to lie in ambush, and have it driven towards me. For half an hour it led us a pretty dance, and we repeatedly had to change our tactics; and, though I felt I did not want to set eyes on another Partridge until I had "bagged" my own particular bird, I must confess to feeling considerable qualms of conscience all the time as to what the rest of the "guns" would think of my desertion and apparent wild-goose—alias, white blackbird—chase. However, the end occasionally justifies the means, as it did in this instance; for, just as I was on the point of abandoning the pursuit as hopeless, the bird proving as averse to being driven as stalked, I chanced a snap-shot at what at the moment of firing I thought quite a prohibitive range, and down it came,—a prodigious fluke, yes, I freely admit,—a stray corn having severed its pinion-bone, and probably not another gone near it. A more beautiful bird of the kind I have never seen, and, though a similar specimen in the South Kensington Museum runs it hard, I prefer the one I was lucky enough to kill at Hinton St. George.

It is possible that someone or other will be found to blame me for what I have recorded in the light rather of a triumph—I deemed it one on the spur of the moment; but, though highly disapproving of the indiscriminate and senseless slaughter of rare species that might breed in greater numbers with us if left unmolested, I do not see that the capture of an abnormal-coloured Blackbird deserves reprobation, and especially when it was a marked bird, and the hand of almost every dweller in the district was against it. Indeed, considering the persecution it underwent, the wonder to me is that it managed to escape its doom for such a lengthened period. Had it been one of a pair of Golden Orioles nesting in the spring of the year in Kent, let us say, my action would have been most properly denounced as reprehensible in the highest degree. It is not after this manner, I have presence of mind enough to know, that the cause of Natural History is best aided. However, it is far from my intention to offer an elaborate apology for what I did, and should probably do again to-morrow if I had the opportunity; "collectors never know remorse, and seldom feel regret," and I am quite sure all my plunderings have not done one ten-thousandth part of the damage which a contrary wind inflicts at migration time.