Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/253

Rh Meadow-Pipits, and even Grouse to be caught in them; and these unfortunate birds are often left for hours, sometimes for days, hanging in lingering misery with a broken limb, till either death from exhaustion, or a knock on the head from a belated keeper on his weekly rounds, at last puts an end to their sufferings. To my mind the best mode of opening the eyes of the public to the wanton and senseless destruction of birds, is by getting the children in the various schools interested in them, and taking them out at least on one afternoon during the summer months, and explaining to them the various birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, flowers, &c., that are to be met with in such a ramble; also by the giving of lectures by practical people, who know what they are talking about, to the landowners, gamekeepers, collectors, gardeners, &c. A vast amount of nonsense is unfortunately both talked and written upon the subject by the ignorant, and then far more harm than good is unwittingly wrought. Some few are, I believe, beyond reclamation.

Much may be done by private enterprise, and here in Yorkshire several of us, who are much interested in preserving from extinction some of our rarer breeding species, have employed a watcher with marked success. Many landowners and game-preservers only need to have the usefulness of certain birds pointed out to them, by those who know what they are talking about, to give immediate orders for their protection; and children can be easily trained to take an interest in these things, and not destroy them. I would be the last to advocate Draconian methods, as in these days by so doing we should defeat the very object that we desire to attain, and many a well-known naturalist has been induced to take up some special study, through the pleasure derived from a day's bird's-nesting in his boyhood. Nor would I ever try to hinder the perfectly legitimate shooting of birds in moderation during the proper season; but while I yield to no one in my love of sport—in pursuit of which I have sat for hours in a hole dug out on the mud flats, waiting for wildfowl to drift in with the tide or pass over at flight-time, with the thermometer standing at many degrees below freezing point; have worked a single-handed punt on the flood water till my hands were so numb with ice and frost that when I got up to the Ducks I could hardly pull the trigger of the big gun; and have been out at sea all day in a small yacht in a driving snow-storm, on the mere chance of a shot—yet I can safely say that I have never killed for killing's sake. The birds I have shot were mostly waifs and strays, here to-day and gone to-morrow; and it gives me far greater pleasure and interest to lay aside the gun and rifle, and take up the field-glass and watch the birds at home in their natural haunts and surroundings. I would far sooner do this than destroy and preserve for my collection any of the rare and beautiful birds that would remain and breed with us, if only their arch-enemy, the man with the gun,