NATURAL HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA 



representatives of a race before his rival gets a chance 

 to do so. Wherever there are birds whose eggs are 

 valuable, there hurries the egg collector to destroy, 

 not only the embryonic life, but often the mature life 

 as well, by shooting the bird that laid the egg for the 

 purpose of identification. Wherever in the wild places 

 of the earth there are birds which are considered to be 

 1 good sport,' there saunters that vandal of creation, 

 the hunter of means and leisure, to expend on the 

 most beautiful and the most harmless works of Nature 

 his instinctive desire to kill." 



" Do you ne'er think what wondrous beings these ? 



Do you ne'er think who made them, and who taught 

 The dialect they speak, where melodies 



Are the interpreters of thought ? 

 Whose household words are songs in many keys. 

 Sweeter than instrument of man e'er caught ! 

 Whose habitation in the tree-tops even 



Are half-way houses on the road to heaven ! " 



Longfellow. 



BIRDS AND HUMAN PROGRESS 



Birds, we now know, are necessary to man in his 

 struggle for food. The human race is steadily increas- 

 ing in numbers and spreading out over the world. 

 When a new country is colonised there is ample 

 elbow room ; and the settler, muddling along in any 

 sort of haphazard manner, is in little or no danger of 



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