vill PREFACE. 
representatives of the species on their migratory course 
may visit our shores in spring; for these, too, are seek- 
ing some far off home, and the local race may thus pass 
away for ever. 
Surely the success which has already attended the 
passing of the Sea-Birds Preservation Bill, should 
encourage its promoters to seek an extension of its 
powers so as to secure a “close time” as well for all 
waders and wild fowl. Of the beneficial effects of such 
an Act there can be no question, judging only from my 
own experience during the last few years of the result 
of careful preservation, within a limited area, and yet 
nothing short of a legal penalty will deter a certain 
class of sportsmen (?) from shooting Snipe long after the 
pairing season has commenced, or even killing a Wild 
Duck from her nest if unfortunately met with at the 
same time. Remonstrance is in vain with such persons, 
who, accustomed year after year to perpetrate such 
enormities, are lost to all sense of shame. In fact, 
they can be classed only with those summer “ excursion- 
ists”? both in the North and South of England, whose 
holiday “sport” until very recently consisted in the 
wholesale slaughter of brooding Gulls and Guillemots ; 
and if such birds, for their beauty, their cries of warning 
to the mariner, or simply on the ground of abolishing 
a cruel practice, are to receive protection during the 
breeding season, why not also our waders and wild- 
fowl, exquisite alike in form and action, and comprising 
many species that, in due season, rank amongst the 
ereatest delicacies of the table, and which, in spite of 
the altered features of the country through drainage 
and cultivation* would still, under a protective system 
marshes, and the Bittern, which, though extinct for some years 
prior to 1866, has since that time been both heard and seen at 
Hoveton during the summer months, and a nestling and eggs have 
been procured at Upton. 
* In “Land and Water” for August 5th, 1870, are some extracts 
