A PRETEXT FOR SLAUGHTER 157 



and die in the air — a subject of rapture with them, 

 they expatiate to women upon that — than gaze on 

 the Niagara Falls — nay, they would sooner shoot it 

 anyhow. Were it a collection of old masters that 

 swept into their plantations, to flutter their darlings, 

 they would wish to destroy them too — unless 

 indeed they could sell them : there would be 

 nothing to look at. Pheasants are their true 

 gods. To kill them last, they would kill every- 

 thing else first — dogs, men, yea women and chil- 

 dren — but not liking, perhaps, to say so, they talk, 

 now, about the song-birds. The starlings, forsooth, 

 disturb them. Oh hypocrites who, for a sordid 

 pound or two, which your pockets could well 

 spare, would cut down the finest oak or elm 

 that ever gladdened a whole countryside — yes, and 

 have often done so — would you pretend to an 

 esthetic motive } This wretched false plea, with 

 an appeal for guidance in the matter of smoking 

 out or otherwise expelling the starlings from their 

 sleeping-places, appeared lately in the Daily Tele- 

 graph. In answer to it I wrote as follows — for I wish 

 to embody my opinion on the matter with the rest 

 of this chapter, nor can I do so in any better way : — 

 "Sir, — Will you allow me to make a hasty 

 protest — for I have little time, and write in the 

 railway-train — against the cruel and ignorant pro- 

 position to destroy the starlings, or otherwise inter- 

 fere with their sleeping arrangements, under the 

 mistaken idea that they do harm to song-birds } 

 I live within a few miles of a wood where a great 

 host of these birds roost, every night. The wood 

 is small, yet in spite of their enormous numbers, 



K 



