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Bird Notes and News 



In a long review in the Times Literary 

 Supplement (November 22nd, 1923) the 

 writer says : — 



The renewed breeding of the bittern in 

 Norfolk after many years is very notable and 

 encouraging ; for in spite of its fairly frequent 

 reappearances in spring, the " mire-drum " or 

 " butterbump " might plausibly have been 

 quoted twenty years ago as the very type of 

 those birds of old England, such as the crane 

 and the bustard, which were supposed to be 

 doomed to extinction by the spread of cultiva- 

 tion. On this point there is a good deal of 

 false argument. Unquestionably the re- 

 clamation of the fens, and many other changes 

 in the face of England, down to the recent 

 spread of fruit gardens and suburban allotments, 

 have greatly changed the numbers of the 

 different species. The bittern and water- 

 rail are banished where the corn-bunting and 

 hawfinch enter and thrive. But English land- 

 scape is so minutely varied, and small remnants 

 of the untilled wilds survive with such per- 

 sistency, that as one looks down the list of 

 twenty-five birds elegised in this book, there is 

 probably not one — not even the pelican, 

 of which bones are the sole relic — that might not 

 be thriving in small numbers to this day if 

 cultivation, and we may add the spread of 

 building, had been its only enemies. 



Other foes have been hunters for the pot, 

 game preservers, what Hudson calls " cockney 

 sportsmen," who kill for killing's sake ; speci- 

 men hunters, who, as Sir Thomas Browne 

 wrote more than two centuries ago of the 

 white spoonbill in Norfolk, kill " not for their 

 meat, but for the handsomeness of the same " ; 

 small farmers who, as Hudson discovered, 

 promise to be worse foes than the game- 

 preserving landlords whose places they have 

 taken ; and last, and far worst of all, the col- 

 lector, who glories in evading the law and 

 redoubles his destructive efiorts exactly in 

 proportion as any species becomes rarer. 



Hudson wished to make all collecting 

 illegal ; and if the threatened species cannot 

 be preserved by any method less drastic, his 

 demand will be strongly and widely rein- 

 forced. But the real pest is neither the bird's- 

 nesting schoolboy nor the few great public or 

 semi-public collections, whose guardians would 

 be subject to public opinion, even if they were 

 not self-disciplined. It is a comparatively 

 small number of affluent people with warped 

 tastes ; and we may still hope that their 

 mischief may be ended by more efiective 



administrations of the law, reinforced by the 

 growth of sound public opinion and by ampler 

 support of the bodies which act as policemen 

 and guardians. . . . 



Much has already been done — largely by the 

 inspiration of Hudson's own writings — to check 

 and to convert those whose prime instinct is 

 to give rare birds or their eggs, in glass cases, 

 what he here calls " a quiet immortality aloof 

 from the perturbations of nature." But it is 

 still an uphill fight, and an expensive one ; 

 and while the various protective funds are 

 forced to contrive curiously for want of money 

 yet more birds may be lost to Britain for ever. 



" Letters from W. H. Hudson." 

 Edited and with an Introduction and 

 Explanatory Notes by Edward Garnett. 

 (Nonesuch Press, 25s.). — Mr. Hudson's 

 intense dislike of the idea of any published 

 biography of himself, and the publication 

 of intimate letters, is known, but it 

 may be assumed without difficulty that 

 he would have raised no objection to 

 the printing of these letters to the 

 literary friend for whose opinions he 

 had perhaps the most regard. They 

 are largely literary, but in the main 

 describe those rambles about the country 

 which resulted in some of his most 

 delightful books, and the selection covers 

 twenty years. All are characteristic of 

 the man — what that Mr. Hudson ever 

 wrote was not characteristic of him ? 

 and for that reason will not willingly be 

 missed by the ever-widening circle of 

 Mr. Hudson's admirers. The edition is, 

 however, limited to 1,000 copies. 



In a finely- written preface, Mr. Garnett 

 says : — 



" I have known several men of genius, 

 remarkable minds, but no man's personality 

 has ever fascinated me like Hudson's. I 

 loved him for his bigness of nature, for his 

 warm and tender heart, for his passionate 

 intensity, for his capriciousness, but beyond 

 this I took pure aesthetic delight in his character. 

 I should think that few men have aroused 

 such warm responsiveness in their fellows as 

 Hudson. Wherever he went, wherever he 

 ajDpeared in roads or fields, in cottages, inns, 

 country houses, people succumbed quickly 

 to the spell of his personality. His tall dark 

 figure, his brusque vivid talk, his magnetic 

 eyes, his strength of manner and the spice 



