264 TRIBUTES TO KNOWLEDGE, 



was most amusing, and gave me a lesson about buying 

 eggs that I have never forgotten. I feel convinced 

 that both the brothers were honestly dealing according 

 to their lights, which were certainly very dim, in the 

 matter of oology, and theirs was the leading zoological 

 business in Paris at the time, 1862."^ 



Any report of the wanton killing of breeding birds 

 invariably aroused his indignation. Thus he writes to an 

 old friend and schoolfellow : — 



"March i,th, 1890. 

 " I have read poor Rudolph of Austria's book (the 

 late Crown Prince). I had some correspondence with 

 him, and met him at Valencia, where he was most 

 especially civil and friendly to me, and my darling eldest 

 boy, who is gone ; the book is very interesting, and 

 most characteristic of the eager, impetuous boy who wrote 

 it. The slaughter of breeding birds is simply disgusting, 

 and only to be excused by the youth of the writer, and 

 the cold-blooded brutality of his ornithological guide and 

 counsellor B . His notes on Spain are faulty." - 



The ladies' fashion of wearing feathers in their hats, 

 a fashion sometimes involving most barbarous cruelty 

 to nesting birds, enlisted all Lord Lilford's chivalrous 



' To the Rev. Murwy Matthew. 

 * Colonel H. Barclay. 



