THE DARTFORD WARBLER 229 



species in England, and had doubtless been so for 

 thousands of years. When the price of a " British- 

 killed " specimen rose to £25, and of a " British- 

 taken " egg to two or three or four pounds, the bird 

 quickly ceased to exist. Probably there is not a 

 local ornithologist in all the land who could not say 

 of some species that bred annually, within the 

 limits of his own country, that it has not been 

 extirpated within the last fifteen years. 



In the instance just related, when the aged vicar, 

 sorrying at the loss of the birds, began to recall the 

 rare pleasure it had given him to watch them dis- 

 porting themselves among the furze-bushes, something 

 of the illusion which had been in his mind imparted 

 itself to mine, for I could see what he was mentally 

 seeing, and the fifteen years dwindled to a very 

 brief space of time. Like Burroughs with the night- 

 ingale, I, too, had arrived a few days too late on the 

 scene ; the " cursed collector " had been before- 

 hand with me, as had indeed been the case on so 

 many previous occasions with regard to other species. 



A short time after my interview with the aged 

 vicar, at an inn a very few miles from the village, I 

 met a person who interested me in an exceedingly un- 

 pleasant way. He was a big repulsive- looking man in 

 a black greasy coat — a human animal to be avoided ; 



