152 Presidential Address. [Sess. 



round Yarmouth and in Norfolk. There is no reason why 

 these should not nest in England to-day as they did eighty 

 years ago. Their chief enemy is the man with the gun, but 

 he is getting slowly trained in England. This should increase 

 the recognition among birds that England is on the way to 

 become an agreeable haven." 



We can quite excuse, even justify, the killing of vermin, 

 the keeping down of the enemies of the farmer, the forester, 

 and the fisherman, — the sea-gulls, by the way, are under 

 suspicion at present, — but the wanton destruction, the exter- 

 mination, of rare and beautiful plants, beasts, and birds, 

 merely to secure dead specimens for some miscalled naturalist, 

 or to gratify the cupidity or the low ambition of some sports- 

 man unworthy of the name, should be condemned by all true 

 naturalists. 



There is, further, statutory protection — that which is 

 afforded by game and wild-bird laws, close-times, &c.; and 

 we would be glad to see these extended and enforced. There 

 has lately been a wish expressed to have the Wild Birds 

 Protection Act extended to St Kilda so as to prevent the 

 extermination of what, one time plentiful, are now becoming 

 rare birds there, because of the too great run upon them by 

 collectors and others. During the past summer the "Wild 

 Birds Protection (County of Zetland) Order " was put in force 

 for the first time — an English clergyman being fined £3 for 

 taking a couple of the eggs of the great skua and one egg of 

 the sea eagle in the islands of Unst and Yell. These would 

 have been expensive eggs (at the rate of 240s. per dozen, 

 besides expenses) for an English vicarage ; but the un- 

 fortunate collector was not permitted to retain what he had 

 paid for so dearly, the Sheriff having " ordered the eggs to 

 be delivered to the procurator-fiscal to be handed over by 

 him to the Professor of Natural History in the University 

 of Edinburgh to be disposed of as he thought fit in the 

 interests of science." The loss of two great skuas and of 

 one sea eagle in posse thus contributed £3 to the local 

 treasury and three valuable specimens to the museum 

 of our metropolitan university — so magnifying the law 

 and advancing the interests of science by one judicial 

 pronouncement. 



