KINDNESS, AND SYMPATHIES 261 



course, and proved to be a splendid adult peregrine, 

 but the point of the story lies in the fact that the person 

 who declared it to be a ' humming buzzard ' is one of 



the Hon. Secretaries of the Natural History and 



Scientific Society ! " ^ 



While Lord Lilford fully recognised the interest 

 and importance to a naturalist of being able personally 

 to collect specimens necessary for his own study, or for 

 national collections, no man, as we have seen, was ever 

 more opposed to wanton and senseless destruction. 



Further, he felt most bitterly about the wholesale 

 traffic in eggs of birds at the hands of traders, as a 

 commercial speculation, and steadily refused to have 

 anything to do with such persons. Nor could he under- 

 stand that spirit of possession or vulgar rivalry which 

 prompts men to stick at nothing, so that they get a 

 larger series than others have, of eggs taken in Britain, 

 or of rare British birds ; or the same kind of practice 

 elsewhere. It is asking too much of human nature, 

 to expect that under these circumstances a dealer will 

 not be found to meet the demand. For example, a 

 naturalist having recorded the extremely interesting 

 establishment of the cream-coloured courser in the 

 Canarian island Fuertaventura, a certain chymist set to 

 work to sweep the island clear of their eggs. Hence 

 the following : — 



1 To E. Cambridge Phillips, Esq. 



