86 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



British period the pheasant must have been a rarity 

 in English woods. And a rarity it remains down to 

 this day in all places where it is left to itself, in spite 

 of the extermination of most of its natural enemies. 

 Unhappily for England the fashion or craze for this 

 bird became common among landowners in recent 

 times — the desire to make it artificially abundant 

 so that an estate which yielded a dozen or twenty 

 birds a year to the sportsman would be made to yield 

 a thousand. This necessitated the destruction of all 

 the wild life supposed in any way and in any degree 

 to be inimical to the protected species. Worse still, 

 men to police the woods, armed with guns, traps, 

 and poison, were required. Consider what this means 

 — men who are hired to provide a big head of game, 

 privileged to carry a gun day and night all the year 

 round, to shoot just what they please! For who is 

 to look after them on their own ground to see that 

 they do not destroy scheduled species ? They must 

 be always shooting something ; that is simply a reflex 

 effect of the liberty they have and of the gun in the 

 hand. Killing becomes a pleasure to them, and 

 with or without reason or excuse they are always 

 doing it — always adding to the list of creatures to 

 be extirpated, and when these fail adding others. 

 "I know perfectly well," said a keeper to me, "that 

 the nightjar is harmless; I don't believe a word about 

 its swallowing pheasants' eggs, though many keepers 

 think they do. I shoot them, it is true, but only for 

 pleasure." So it has come about that wherever 

 pheasants are strictly preserved, hawks — including 



