AND INCREASE OF CERTAIN BIRDS IN SCOTLAND. o7 
they not most jealously protected. But the birds themselves 
migrate and so cannot be sheltered; and in April this year 
one was butchered at Beverley, Yorkshire, as it passed 
northwards to its breeding-place. The only consolation (a 
small one) in this case was that the gunner’s friends 
triumphantly wrote to the Field, announcing that this rare 
bird had been “obtained.” This act led to the prosecution 
and conviction of the criminal for shooting a protected bird 
in the close season. But genuine collectors and ornitholo- 
gists are much to blame in the matter of exterminating 
rare birds. The prices offered by them for British eggs and 
specimens are so high that shepherds and keepers can 
scarcely resist the temptation. And so the mischief is done, 
the nest is robbed, the parents are shot, and yet another 
bird becomes extinct as a British-breeding species. 
But, worse still, scientific men, who know the mischief 
they are doing, will shoot the birds or take the eggs, often, 
indeed, for museums—sometimes, I fear, for money. I 
cannot help quoting a recent instance to show what I 
mean, though in this case the British bird is not a British- 
breeding bird. 
A very well-known ornithologist visited Novaya Zemlya 
and some adjacent islands in July 1897. In the published 
account of this expedition,* he speaks of “that charming 
bird” the Little Stint (Zringa minuta), for which he 
showed his liking by taking 183 eggs of this species—“ all 
of which,” he punctiliously adds, “were fertile.” Comment 
is needless. 
It is not quite so bad to find eggs taken for food, as in 
the cases of the Blackheaded Gull (Larus ridibundus) and 
the Lapwing (Vanellus cristatus); but certain it is that both 
these birds are decreasing because of the constant gathering 
of their eggs. In a highly-cultivated county like East 
Lothian, I do not think that one pair of lapwings out of 
four manage to rear their young. 
4. The last reason of the decrease is the increase of other 
birds. 
It is at this point that the cog-wheels of the delicately- 
* Ibis, April 1898, 
VOL. I. 5 
