go ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



except for the one offence of dealing in game and 

 eggs on his own account. In everything else he 

 has a free hand; if it is not given him he takes it, 

 and there is nothing he resents so much as being 

 interfered with or advised or instructed as to what 

 species he is to spare. Tell him to spare an owl or a 

 kestrel and he instantly resolves to kill it; and if 

 you are such a faddist as to want to preserve every- 

 thing he will go so far as to summon his little crowd 

 of humble followers and parasites and set them to 

 make a clean sweep of all the wild life in the woods, 

 as in the instance I have described. No, it is mere 

 waste of energy to inform individual owners of such 

 abuses. The craze exists for a big head of game, or 

 rather of this exotic bird of the woods, called in scorn 

 and disgust the "sacred bird" by one who was himself 

 a naturalist and sportsman; the owners are them- 

 selves responsible for the system and have created 

 the class of men necessary to enable them to follow 

 this degraded form of sport. I use the word advisedly: 

 Mr. A. Stuart-Wortley, the best authority I know 

 on the subject, an enthusiast himself, mournfully 

 acknowledges in his book on the pheasant that 

 pheasant shooting as now almost universally con- 

 ducted in England is not sport at all. 



One odd result of this over-protection of an exotic 

 species and consequent degradation of the woodlands 

 is that the bird itself becomes a thing disliked by the 

 lover of nature. No doubt it is an irrational feeling, 

 but a very natural one nevertheless, seeing that what- 

 soever is prized and cherished by our enemy, or the 



