GREAT BIRD GATHERINGS 39 



not a brutisii nation ready to stamp out all beauty from 

 the earth so long as the killing and stamping out 

 processes minister to our pleasure or profit. On the 

 contrary we can afiirm that a majority of the inhabi- 

 tants of tiiis country are desirous of preserving its beau- 

 tiful wild bird life. Those who are on the other side 

 may be classified as the barbarians of means who are 

 devoted mainly to sport, and would cheerfully see the 

 destruction of most of our birds above the size of a 

 thrush for the sake of that disastrous exotic, the semi- 

 domestic pheasant of the preserves; secondly, the private 

 collector, that "curse of rural England"; and last but 

 not least, the regiment of horrible women who persist 

 in decorating their heads with aigrettes and carcases of 

 slaughtered birds. In the forty odd years that have 

 passed since a first attempt was made to give some pro- 

 tection t® our wild birds much has been done in Eng- 

 land ; and happily in other lands and continents occupied 

 by men of British race our example is being followed. 

 Would that the Americans had begun to follow it three 

 decades sooner, since owing to their tardiness they have 

 many and great losses to lament. It is not strange that 

 the crested screamer, with many other noble species, 

 has quickly been done to death in a country overrun by 

 Italians, when it is remembered that in the United States 

 of America the passenger pigeon, the most abundant 

 species in all that continent, has been extirpated in very 

 recent times without an effort having been made to save 

 it. Now that it is gone the accounts given by Audubon 

 and Fenimore Cooper of its numbers when its migrating 



