BLACKBIRDS, NIGHTINGALES, ETC. 335 



these amiable basilisks, these busy little man-shaped 

 rinderpests, who kill so well-meaningly and hate the 

 very breath of life without ever once knowing it ! if 

 they had devoted their whole lives to picking pockets, 

 or even to being politicians, they would have done, at 

 the end of them, less harm — far, far less harm — in the 

 world than they are now every day doing. Every 

 day, through them, some specific life that is, or was, 

 of more value than all their individual ones put 

 together, is getting scarcer, or ceasing to be. For, 

 surely, a beautiful butterfly, say, that, for all time, 

 charms — and raises by charming — some number of 

 those who see it, does more good on this earth than 

 any single man or woman, who, "departing," leaves no 

 " footprints on the sands of time." Homer, for in- 

 stance, has left his " Iliad " and " Odyssey," and these 

 have been, and still are, mighty in their effects. But 

 let them once perish, and Homer will be caught up 

 and overtaken by almost any bird or butterfly — even 

 a brown one. Or, if Homer will not, assuredly many 

 an English poet-laureate will be, or has been already 

 (Pye, for instance), though his volumes in the British 

 Museum are safe as consols. If there be any truth 

 in this reflection, it should tend to make us a little 

 less conceited than we are. Yet what is a little in 

 such a matter ? — " Oh, reform it altogether." 



For myself, I must confess that I once belonged 

 to this great, poor army of killers, though, happily, 

 a bad shot, a most /atigahle collector, and a poor, 

 half-hearted bungler, generally. But now that I have 

 watched birds closely, the killing of them seems to 

 me as something monstrous and horrible ; and, for 

 every one that I have shot, or even only shot at 



