336 BIRD WATCHING 



and missed, I hate myself with an increasing hatred. 

 I am convinced that this most excellent result might 

 be arrived at by numbers and numbers of others, if 

 they would only begin to do the same; for the pleasure 

 that belongs to observation and inference is, really, far 

 greater than that which attends any kind of skill or 

 dexterity, even when death and pain add their zest 

 to the latter. Let anyone who has an eye and a 

 brain (but especially the latter), lay down the gun 

 and take up the glasses for a week, a day, even for 

 an hour, if he is lucky, and he will never wish to 

 change back again. He will soon come to regard 

 the killing of birds as not only brutal, but dreadfully 

 silly, and his gun and cartridges, once so dear, will 

 be to him, hereafter, as the toys of childhood are to 

 the grown man. 



Nor will the good effect stop here. Birds are 

 but a part of the life on this our earth, and the 

 hatred of destruction, once kindled by them, will, 

 like the ripples made by a stone flung into the 

 water, extend outwards through the whole animal 

 and vegetable kingdom till it include, at last, man 

 himself — yes, even the Chinese. Unfortunately, long 

 before anything of this kind is likely to happen, all 

 birds, except poultry, and, perhaps, a lingering 

 sparrow or two, will have been destroyed. This 

 seems a cheerless prospect, but, as usual (to write like 

 an optimist), it has its brighter side. Women will then 

 be no longer able to wear hats, to adorn which the 

 most beautiful of earth's creatures have been ruthlessly 

 slaughtered, and, therefore, faith in them will begin 

 once more to revive. Faith in woman, we know, is a 

 very important thing. A nation that has once lost it 



