92 



BIRD NOTES AND NEWS, 



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NATIONAL COLLECTIONS. 



Ml". Edmund Selous, whose earnestness in denun- 

 ciation of the collector all Bird Protectors must 

 admire, writes to impeach the Royal Society for 

 the Protection of Birds for holding a reception at 

 the British Museum of Natural History. Museums, 

 he contends, are all " so many centres of destruc- 

 tion, all vying with each other to procure whatever 

 is rare." 



" It would be wonderful, indeed, if such great 

 crowds of carcases (some in nuptial plmiiage) set 

 up and arranged imder the gegis of science and 

 professorship, upheld by Government — officially 

 stamped and approved as it were — did not 

 strengthen and confirm in any young fellow the idea 

 natural to his age and savage descent, that 

 slaughter is the one end and aim of natural history, 

 or rather that slaughter in excelsis is natural 

 history, or, at least, seven-eighths of it." 



But in thus condemning " hall-marked " national 

 collections of fauna, Mr. Selous is surely supporting 

 the really dangerous collector. It is the institution 

 of a national collection, under proper scientific 

 management, which destroys at once every need 

 for the vinregulated and unauthorised private 

 collector whose selfish greed-and-grab jDolicy is 

 the curse of rare-bird life. The idea that a lad 

 visiting the collection at South Kensington could 

 be impressed mainly, or at all, with the idea of 

 "slaughter" is unthinkable. The specimens or 

 representatives of live creatures there show him the 

 wonder and beauty of animal life, teach him definite 

 scientific facts, and suggest, by the groups of birds 

 in their natiu'al surroundings, how infinitely charm- 

 ing are the birds in their own proper haunts, to 

 which he may perchance follow them and study 

 all the marvels of instinct, intelligence, and song, 

 which no museum can reproduce. The national 

 and authorised possession of beautiful things 

 shovild destroy the individualist theory of collector, 

 bird-catcher, and plume-hunter ; and the visitor 

 to the Natural History Museiun who brings away 

 a desire to kill and destroy must be as brainless 

 as the woman who, seeing these wonders of creation 

 seriously presented for her intelligence, should wish 

 to prostitute them to the " trimming " of her hat. 



MUSEUMS AND MUSEUMS. 



The local museum, if in its turn projaerly managed 

 should promote not only study, but definite Bird 



Protection. With a curator interested in his work, 

 and well versed in the Bird Protection law of the 

 district (and this should be placarded permanently 

 in the gallery), it ought to be a centre of light and 

 leading, and the terror of bird-destroyers. Happily 

 there are such maseums and such curators. There 

 are also miLseums where a mouldering collection 

 of ill-labelled remains attests the lethargy of local 

 authorities, and museum? where a curator is accom- 

 modating enough to buy or identify without question 

 newly-killed rare birds that are brought to him. 

 If it were of a neglected " bird-cemetery " or of 

 indifferent management that Mr. Selous complained, 

 or even of the practice of sending to museums of 

 all kinds, parties of children without guide or 

 teacher, — it would be more easy to imderstand his 

 protest and to give it the sympathy which his 

 sincerity always commands. 



BIRD SLAUGHTER IN ITALY. 



A protest has again been raised by Mr. Hubert 

 D. Astley against the appalling slaughter of migra- 

 tory birds which takes place every autumn in 

 Northern Italy. The Morning Post, in a special 

 article, gives a detailed account of the hundreds 

 of thousands of " roccolos " or bird-slaughter- 

 houses in the North of Italy, especially the Lake 

 district, where the weary birds, tempted by berry- 

 bearing trees, are trajDped in a way ' ' devilish in 

 its ingenuity." So wanton and so cruel is the 

 slaughter, adds the writer, that it is strange no 

 protest should have been made against it by any 

 Power except Switzerland. The familiar Italian 

 excvise, that the habit of bird-catching and bird- 

 eating is too deeply engrained in the people to be 

 dealt with by legislation, cannot be accepted. 

 Not only is it a deplorable excuse for any Govern- 

 ment to employ for any evil, but the Swiss them- 

 selves have put down the custom in Canton Ticino, 

 where it formerly prevailed, by the help of the 

 frontier guards, of heavy fines and of imprisonment. 



BIRD DESTRUCTION IN BRITAIN. 



The suggestion which at once comes to the 

 British mind, is that Great Britain is the Power 

 that ought to protest, it being Britain's accejated 

 mission to protest against the iniquities of other 

 peoples. But, in the first place, Britain cannot 



