34 



Bird Notes and News 



associated with the work from its earliest 

 days, and has been its friend through 

 thirty years of struggle and effort. He 

 joined the young association in 1891, 

 when it was first started in London, and 

 was but a group of women fighting an 

 evil fashion, with men as " honorary " 

 co-workers. He became a member of 

 the first Committee that was formed, in 

 1893, and remained continuously on the 

 governing body, keenly watchful and 

 helpful even when, of late years, unable 

 to attend many of the Council meetings. 



In 1892 the third of the Society's 

 pubUcations, ** Ospreys, or Egrets and 

 Aigrettes," came from his pen and at 

 once placed the campaign on a different 

 platform from that which it had occupied. 

 In 1893, and again in 1897, he brought 

 the hideous slaughter of birds by the 

 plume-hunter vividly before the nation 

 through the columns of the Times, which 

 on each occasion supported his protest 

 with a leading article. In 1 895 " A Letter 

 to the Clergy " appealed for the help of 

 ministers of all denominations in bringing 

 home to women their partnership in the 

 hateful business. "If in every pulpit of 

 the land," wrote Mr. Hudson, " this 

 shocking story of the egrets were told, 

 surely for once humanity would prove 

 stronger than fashion." That either the 

 pulpit failed of its duty, or Fashion 

 proved stronger than the Church, is but 

 too well known. It was still to be 26 

 years before even a maimed measure 

 passed through ParUament. 



Meanwhile, in 1894, Mr. Hudson had 

 struck at another evil, his pamphlet 

 " Lost British Birds " pointing to the 

 continuous loss of the noblest British 

 species, not wholly or mainly through 

 natural causes, but through callous 

 brutahty, the keeper's gun, and the 

 collector's greed. He had spoken with 

 noble indignation upon the wanton des- 

 truction of animal life, in reference 

 especially to the big-game hunter, in his 

 work " The NaturaUst in La Plata," 

 published in 1892, a work which, by its 

 intimate knowledge, depth and originahty 



of thought, and beauty of language, gave 

 its author his place once and for all among 

 the classics. He dealt with the matter 

 in its more English aspect, as touching 

 the collector, in " Birds and Man " (1901), 

 a volume containing some of his freshest 

 and most delightful papers. In this, 

 discussing the threatened extermination 

 of the Dartford Warbler, he poured con- 

 tempt upon the whole deadly craze for 

 destroying unutterably beautiful and in- 

 telligent hfe in order to fill glass cases 

 and cabinets with dead trophies and 

 specimens. Here, and again and again 

 in subsequent years, he urged that no 

 general law for protecting species (on 

 paper) would ever suffice, since collectors 

 come from the wealthy classes who can 

 evade such a law ; and that the one way 

 of saving rare British birds was by the 

 prohibition of all private collecting and 

 collections. " This," he wrote in the 

 Field, December 14th, 1912, "is a very 

 big order, I am told, because the collectors 

 are an influential class, and there are 

 a good many of them even among our 

 legislators. But we are living in strange 

 times, getting more and more democratic. 

 The feeling for preserving our wild life — 

 or what is left of it — grows apace, and 

 possibly we shall have the cry raised that 

 the wild birds are the people's birds for 

 all time, and must not be sacrificed for 

 the sake of the comparatively few persons 

 who like to amuse themselves by collecting 

 rare birds." 



In " Lost British Birds " he divided 

 the blame among " the following three 

 inveterate bird-destroyers who have done 

 and are doing the most to alter, and, from 

 the Nature-lover's point of view, to 

 degrade the character of our bird popula- 

 tion : the cockney sportsman, who kills 

 for killing's sake ; the gamekeeper, who 

 has set down the five-and-twenty most 

 interesting indigenous species as ' vermin ' 

 to be extirpated ; and the greedy collec- 

 tor, whose methods are as discreditable 

 as his action is injurious." The sports- 

 man has been more or less cramped by the 

 law ; the gamekeeper is becoming better 

 informed. At the time of his death, Mr. 



