4i6 THE BIOLOGY OF BIRDS 



are the masterpieces of ages, they are " fearfully and won- 

 derfully made," they are beautiful and charming personalities, 

 and, once gone, they are irreplaceable. All the king's 

 horses and all the king's men cannot give us back an exter- 

 minated Dartford Warbler. In abetting the destruction 

 of treasures of which we are the responsible trustees, we are 

 not only impoverishing the fauna, but doing violence to 

 our own better selves. 



We welcome such a wise measure as the Plumage Bill, 

 but there is still great need for an education of public 

 opinion in regard to the conservation of birds. The back- 

 wardness is due, we are convinced, rather to lack of attention 

 and imagination than to lack of good- will. Let us take 

 an appeal from one of Mr. W. H. Hudson's unsurpassable 

 essays, where he is describing the American ostrich or 

 Rhea, notable for its fleetness, great staying powers, and 

 beautiful strategy when hunted, and for its strange habit of 

 " running with one wing raised vertically, like a great sail — 

 a veritable ship of the wilderness." 



" Rhea-hunting, the ' wild mirth of the desert,' which 

 the native horseman has known for the last three centuries, 

 is now passing away, for the Rhea's fleetness can no longer 

 avail him. He may scorn the horse and his rider, what time 

 he lifts himself up, but the cowardly murderous methods 

 of science, and a systematic war of extermination, have 

 left him no chance. And with the Rhea go the flamingo, 

 antique and splendid, and the swans in their bridal plumage, 

 and the rufous tinamou — sweet and mournful melodist 

 of the eventide ; and the noble crested screamer, that 

 clarion- voiced watch-bird of the night in the wilderness. 

 These, and the other large avians, together with the finest 

 of the mammalians, will shortly be lost to the pampas as 

 utterly as the great bustard is to England, and as the wild 

 turkey and bison and many other species will shortly be lost 

 to North America. Like immortal flowers they have drifted 

 down to us on the ocean of time, and their strangeness and 

 beauty bring to our imaginations a dream and a picture 

 of that unknown world immeasurably far removed." 



