So ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



a line of defence that would ensure his acquittal perhaps in 

 19 cases out of 20, whatever might be the evidence of the 

 prosecution. 



On the other hand, the ordinary school-boy could not 

 afford counsel ; and, being ignorant of the mode of escape, 

 would be almost invariably convicted. If the Bench before 

 whom he was brought let him off with a reprimand and a 

 nominal penalty, a few cases of the kind would render the 

 Act ridiculous. If the Bench inflicted a serious fine, and in 

 default of payment, as would commonly happen, he went to 

 gaol, the country would very properly ring with an outcry 

 against an Act which brought that fate upon him for doing 

 what an ancient authority still respected by some people- 

 held to be irreprehensible (see Deuteronomy xxii. 6, 7). 



But, as already hinted, there are places in which the 

 school-boy may do real harm, and I see no injustice in limit- 

 ing him to some extent, while the " collector " is generally 

 baneful ; and, as I have tried to shew, the man who gathers 

 eggs to eke out a living would be content, if not pleased, with 

 restrictions that would tend to multiply the birds which pro- 

 duce them --just as professional gunners now admit that, 

 since the passing (in 1876) of the Wild-Fowl Preservation 

 Act, there are more wild-fowl to shoot. I therefore strongly 

 urge that the present Bill be amended so as to enable places 

 and not species to be protected. It is an historical fact that 

 old laws, which certainly did not err on the side of leniency, 

 prohibiting the taking of the eggs of the Bustard, Crane, 

 Spoonbill, and Wild Goose, have not saved those species 

 from extirpation in England, and a naturalist may well 

 doubt whether any law of that kind would have a beneficial 

 effect on any species whose numbers are now dwindling ; but 

 no one can doubt that if certain localities, judiciously chosen, 

 were reserved as breeding-places by inhibiting in them for a 

 longer or shorter time, as may seem advisable, the molesta- 

 tion of all birds frequenting them, a considerable number of 

 species, the numbers of which are surely decreasing, would 

 thereby take benefit, and this with proper precautions, with- 

 out much risk of mischief, which I believe the Bill in its 

 present shape will inevitably produce. 



Of these precautions, I would remark that it appears to 



