CLOSE-TIME COMMITTEE 141 



say, because they are breeding, since during that season 

 they put ofE much of their natural shyness and fall easy 

 victims to the professional gunners. Furthermore, all 

 who really know anything of birds know that it is just 

 those kinds which are rapidly diminishing in number — 

 some of them, which in bygone days were most abundant, 

 are now only seen as stray visitors. There is, for example, 

 the Avocet, the disappearance of which can be plainly 

 traced to its destruction by gunners. 



There can be no doubt that in its original form the 

 Bill, as suggested by the Close-time Committee was a 

 practicable scheme, and which would have gone far 

 towards the protection of British wild-fowl. Unfor- 

 tunately, in an almost deserted House, Mr. Auberon 

 Herbert, on the motion for going into Committee, suc- 

 ceeded in carrying by a majority of 20 to 15, an " instruc- 

 tion " to extend the protection accorded under the Bill 

 to " Wild-fowl " to other wild birds, and thereupon the 

 spirit of the Bill was entirely changed, and it was con- 

 verted from the reasonable measure originally contem- 

 plated into one of indefinite and general scope. It was 

 at once evident that in its new shape it would be im- 

 practicable, and notice was speedily given for its rejection. 

 Finally, it was referred to a Select Committee, by whom 

 its sweeping clauses were limited by the introduction of 

 schedules of certain birds to be protected, while the 

 penalties were diminished. No ornithologist whose 

 opinion could carry the slightest weight appears to have 

 been consulted, and no ornithologist was among the 

 twenty-three members forming the Select Committee. 



Mr. Herbert, on the 21st of June last, laid a cuckoo's 

 egg in the carefully-built nest of the British Association 

 Committee, and the produce is a useless monster — the 

 wonder alike of the learned and the layman, and an awful 

 warning as an example of amateur legislation.* 



* Letter to Edward Newton, July 10, 1872. 



