RELATIONS TO ANIMATE ENVIRONMENT 119 



Unfortunately, Great Britain furnishes us with many in- 

 stances of this process of extermination, which is the first step 

 to extinction. The recital of this history makes a melancholy 

 story whicli has been told at length, and with uncommon force 

 and weight by Professor Newton, than whom none have ever 

 excelled in all that pertains to the history of birds. From his 

 account the following instances are for the most part selected. 



First of all we have the Crane, which was described by 

 Turner as breeding in our fens in 1544, but soon after this 

 date this magnificent bird seems to have forsaken its breeding 

 haunts and to have been met with only as a winter visitant. 

 Though we have no record of the fact, this must be inferred 

 from an observation of Sir Thomas Browne, who speaks of it, 

 in 1682, as being found in the open parts of Norfolk in winter^ 

 the county in which it formerly bred in considerable numbers. 

 In 1678 Willoughby was still able to say : " They come to us often 

 in England, and in the fen-counties, Lincolnshire and Cam.- 

 bridgeshire, there are great flocks of them ; but whether or no 

 they breed in England I cannot determine. . . ." Their disap- 

 pearance is to be attributed to the drainage of the marshes, the 

 increase of the population, and the use of firearms. With the 

 dying out of the original breeding stock the number of annual 

 visitants slowly declined, till now it occurs only sporadically 

 — a single bird being seen and generally killed at once — every 

 ten years or so. The same is true of the Spoon-bill {Platalea 

 leucorodia\ and of its near relative the Glossy Ibis {Ibis falcin- 

 ellus). And to these we must add the Great Bustard {Otis tarda), 

 the Ruff {Machetes pugnax), the Avocet {Avocetta rcairvi- 

 rostrd) and the Capercailzie, which has been successfully rein- 

 troduced, while others, such as the Bearded Tit {Pamiriis 

 biarinicus) and the Great Skua, are fast disappearing. Among 

 birds of prey the havoc has been even more striking, and this 

 is owing to the zeal of game-preservers who, in their slaughter 

 of so-called " vermin," have exhibited a combination of greed 

 and ignorance such as cannot be described in temperate 

 language. 



The insane vanity of women has brought about a desperate 

 condition of things with regard to birds in other lands. The 

 ends of the earth have been searched to provide birds of beauti- 

 ful plumage for the trade of the milliner; and this traffic has 



