240 BIRDS AND MAN 



greatest sinners, who are not infrequently the most 

 intelHgent men, would escape scot free. 



Perhaps I should have said that three suggestions 

 have been made, for there is yet another, put forward 

 by ]Mr Richard Kearton in one of liis late books. 

 He is thoroughly convinced, he tells us, that the 

 County Council orders are perfectly useless in the 

 case of any and every rare bird which collectors 

 covet ; and on that point we are all agreed ; he 

 then says : " We should select a dozen species 

 admitted by a committee of practical ornithologists 

 to be in danger, and afford them personal protection 

 during the whole of the breeding season by placing 

 reliable watchers, night and day, upon the nesting- 

 ground." 



Watchers provided and paid by individuals and 

 associations have been in existence these many 

 years, and this is undoubtedly the best plan in the 

 case of all species which breed in colonies. These 

 are mostly sea-birds — gulls, terns, cormorants, guille- 

 mots, razor-bills, etc. Our rare birds are distributed 

 over the country, and in the case of some, if a hundred 

 pairs of a species exist in the British Islands, a 

 hundred or two hundred watchers would have to be 

 engaged. But who that has any knowledge of what 

 goes on in the collecting world does not know that 



