i6o ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



our right and proper course is to finish it off as quickly 

 as may be, seeing that by so doing we furnish our 

 cabinets with a large number of specimens for the benefits 

 of science and of posterity. The law does not protect 

 our birds and country from these robbers; they have 

 too many respected representatives in high places, on 

 the benches of magistrates, in the Houses of Parliament, 

 and among important people generally. For are they 

 not robbers and of the very worst description? Those 

 who break into our houses to steal our gold steal trash 

 in comparison; while these, who are never sent to Port- 

 land or Dartmoor, are depriving the country with its 

 millions of inhabitants of one of its best possessions — 

 its lustrous wild life. 



Here I came to a village which happened to be one 

 of the very few, certainly not above half a dozen, in 

 all that county never previously visited by me; and as 

 it was within easy distance of the spot I had come to 

 explore I had some idea of settling in it for a few days. 

 I had long known it by name, and it had furthermore 

 been minutely and lovingly described to me by an old 

 soldier, decorated with many medals, who is now a 

 keeper in one of the Royal parks. One day last spring 

 he showed me a blackbird's nest in which he took a 

 somewhat anxious interest on account of its unsafe posi- 

 tion on a wart or projection on the trunk of a Spanish 

 chestnut tree, a few feet from the ground and plainly 

 visible to mischievous eyes. Our talk about this careless 

 blackbird and other birds led to his telling me of his 

 boyhood in a small out-of-the-world Hampshire village. 



