Bird Notes and News 



75 



of this article from a recent pronouncement 

 of the Board of Agriculture, may possibly 

 be not unconnected with the issue of the 

 Society's leaflet " Birds, Insects, and Crops." 

 If so, its heads may be congratulated on at 

 least reading such a leaflet as the Board 

 itself should have issued. But here again 

 the fatal genie dogged its steps. Having 

 already commended bird-destruction of many 

 kinds without the faintest allusion to laws 

 or close-time, the Board now proceeds to 

 advocate the use of strychnine, in complete 

 obhviousness of the Poisoned Grain Clause 

 of the Protection of Am'mals Act, 1911, 

 under which farmers have been heavily 

 fined for putting strychnine-soaked grain 

 on their land. The added caution that 

 no bird but the house-sparrow is to be 

 allowed to pick up this poisoned grain, 

 and that the sparrow must pick up every 

 grain lest better creatures eat thereof and 

 be killed, gives a comic element to what is 

 otherwise a very grave matter. 



Does it ever strike the Board of Agriculture 

 that the labouring agriculturist, who has 

 never been encouraged by the " authorities " 

 to have the slightest respect for birdlife 

 (beyond the nine subjects of the nine historic 



leaflets) will not be hkely to attach anj 

 importance whatever to this proviso ? 



Or does it ever strike the Board ot 

 Agriculture that village folk, and boys 

 and children, wholly untaught (save here 

 and there through the personal eflForts of 

 teachers and others) to know the birds 

 and to value them, will attach any im- 

 portance to the edict that House-Sparrows 

 only should be killed in the present anti- 

 small bird campaign which it has set on foot ? 



Or does it occur to Departments and 

 Boards and law-makers that a year's official 

 instruction to set laws at naught, will make 

 waste-paper of such laws for years to come ? 



For this is the crux of the whole matter. 

 // the countryside had such knowledge as 

 to exercise careful discrimination in the 

 preservation of useful birdhfe ; if there were 

 no ignorant prejudice against birds ; if the 

 laws were well-known and had been thor- 

 oughly enforced ; if no children or larrikins 

 habitually persecuted birds out of sheer 

 callous stupidity ; if, in short, wisdom and 

 humanity reigned on every side, there 

 would be no need of the Board of Agriculture 

 to teach the rural world. The boot would 

 be on the other foot. 



Sparrow Clubs. 



The Countess of Warwick, in an article in 

 the Daihj Chronicle (May 30), writes : " It 

 has been suggested that children should take 

 the nests and young of sparrows. Now the 

 house sparrow, the only bird against which 

 the agriculturist brings serious charges, 

 builds as a rule out of the reach of children. 

 But the delightful hedge-sparrow, which, 

 of course, is not a true sparrow at all, builds 

 in the lanes and by- ways, and the mis- 

 guided zeal of the sparrow club organisers 

 will sacrifice countless eggs and young of 

 the insect-eating birds that are our best 

 friends. In this way the interests of the 

 country suffer. 



" Quite apart from this aspect of the 

 question there is another of very wide im- 

 portance. There is in many children an 



instinct towards cruelty that can be eradi- 

 cated quite successfully by careful treatment, 

 and can be developed to a hideous extent 

 by the neglect of parents and guardians to 

 enforce John Ruskin's famous maxim that 

 he who is not actively kind is cruel. What 

 can we hope for from children who are 

 taught that it is their duty to catch sparrows 

 or take the fledglings from their nests and 

 destroy them in any ugly fashion they like ? 

 " Cruelty is a fearful disease to plant in 

 a child. If it is perfectly clear and beyond 

 the possibility of doubt that sparrows are 

 harmful to man and must be kept in check, 

 let the necessary steps be taken by people 

 old enough to know what they are doing 

 and humane enough to do it in the quickest 

 and most effective fashion ; in any case let 

 nothing be done in the sight of children." 



