8 T. A. Coward — Presidential Address 



precious eggs or voung. It was butchery of the grossest 

 kind, and the drain on numbers was beyond all calculation, 

 for the young perished of hunger on the ledges. In many 

 cases no effort was made to gather the spoil ; gull feathers 

 were too plentiful to make the labour profitable; the excuse of 

 commercialism could not be given ; it was sheer brutality. 



" If this is not cruelty, what is it? " was Newton's indig- 

 nant cry. ** Can men blaze away hour after hour at these 

 wretched inoffensive birds and call it ' Sport ' without being 

 morally the worse for it? We thank God that we are not 

 as Spaniards are, who gloat over the brutalities of a bull- 

 fight. Why, here in a dozen places around our own coasts 

 we have annuallv an amount of agony inflicted on thousands 

 of our fellow-creatures, to which the torture of a dozen horses 

 and bulls in a ring are as nothing."* 



The railway companies advertised the opportunities for 

 sport, and then the subtle trader stepped in and created a 

 fashion in gulls' feathers; the price went up, the dealers were 

 able to offer one shilling per kittiwake, so Cordeaux states, 

 and one man alone boasted that he had slain 4,000 adult birds 

 in one season. Taking into consideration the number of 

 eggs which might have been laid and reared, the number of 

 young which certainly must have been starved in the nest, 

 and the wounded birds which escaped to slowlv perish, it is 

 probable that that single butcher was responsible for a reduc- 

 tion in one year of at least 10,000 birds. '' Fair and innocent 

 as the snowy plumes may appear in a lady's hat," says 

 Newton, '' I must tell the wearer the truth — ' She bears the 

 murderer's brand on her forehead.' " 



But why agonize our feelings with things of the past ? 

 The Sea Birds' Act, though repealed, as was the later Wild- 

 fowl Act of 1872, was, after many struggles, replaced bv a 

 better and more sweeping measure, and all birds are now 

 protected. Are they ? It is just because what Newton fore- 

 saw has taken place — the substitution of a nominally better 

 Act with much wider scope, framed by men who were either 

 indifferent or not disinterested, has failed in a great measure 

 to preserve those species which were most in danger. It is 

 true to say that the Act of 1869, converted into that of 1880, 

 has saved the kittiwake, but it has not converted the sinners 

 nor roused a better spirit in the general public. Egg- 

 snatching on the Yorkshire cliffs is still a trade, and though 

 under proper regulations it would not do serious damage to 



* Wollaston. " Life of .Alfred Newton," 1921. 



