2o8 LOST AND VANISHING BIRDS 



all sentiment aside, are absolutely useful to agri- 

 culture and horticulture; many of them rank as 

 our most beautiful species. Why need we talk 

 of importing foreign species for their beauty, to 

 adorn our woods and fields, when we have such 

 charmingly arrayed indigenous birds as the Magpie 

 and the Jay, the Goldfinch, the Woodpeckers, the 

 Kingfisher, and the Lapwing ? — all of them clad in 

 raiment as fair as that of many exotic species, and 

 all of them endeared to us by the oldest associations. 

 Our Bird Protection Acts, admirable as was the 

 spirit that prompted them, are weak and impotent, 

 because their enforcement is nobody's business. 

 We think the time has come for something stronger 

 than a protest, when about one-fifth of the in- 

 digenous avifauna — many of the species of the 

 highest usefulness or entirely harmless — of the 

 British Islands is threatened with more or less 

 speedy extermination ! Much has been accom- 

 plished already, but more will have to be done: 

 and bird lovers must not, cannot rest until their 

 favourites are in a position of greater security 

 than they are to-day. 



