THE DARTFORD WARBLER 247 



specimen, all talking and arguing, when another member wlio 

 by cbance was not a collector moved to my side and whispered 

 in my ear : " Just like a lot of little children ! " 



Is it not time to say to these " little children " that they 

 must find a new toy — a fresh amusement to fill their vacant 

 hours : that birds — living flying birds — are a part of nature, 

 of this visible world in this island, the dwelling-place of some 

 forty-five or fifty millions of souls ; that these millions have a 

 right in the country's wild life too — surely a better one than 

 that of a few hundreds of gentlemen of leisure who have money 

 to hire gamekeepers, bird-stuffers, wild-fowlers, and many 

 others, to break the law for them, and to take the punishment 

 when any is given ? 



By saying it will be understood that I mean enacting a law 

 to prohibit private collection. It is surely time. But what 

 prospects are there of such an Act being passed by a Parliament 

 which has spent six years playing with a Plumage Prohibition 

 Bill! 



Well, just now we have a committee appointed by the Govern- 

 ment to consider the whole question of bird protection with a 

 view to fresh legislation. Will this committee recommend the 

 one and only way to put a stop to the continuous destruction 

 of our rarer birds ? I don't think so. For such a law 

 would be aimed at those of their own class, at their friends, at 

 themselves. 



At the end of the chapter I gave an account of an interview 

 I had with a great landowner who happened to be a collector, 

 and who cried out that such a law as the one I suggested would 

 be an unwarrantable interference with the liberty of the subject. 

 Another interview years later was with one who is not only a 

 landowner, the head of a branch of a great family in the land, 

 but a great power in the political world as well, and, finally, 

 {not wonderful to relate) a great " protector of birds." " No," 



