THE SACRED BIRD 87 



fashion or craze for this bird became common among 

 landowners in recent times — the desire to make it 

 artificially abundant so that an estate which yielded a 

 dozen or twenty birds a year to the sportsman would 

 be made to yield a thousand. This necessitated the 

 destruction of all the wild life supposed in any way 

 and in any degree to be inimical to the protected 

 species. Worse still, men to police the woods, armed 

 with guns, traps, and poison, were required. Consider 

 what this means — men who are hired to provide a 

 big head of game, privileged to carry a gun day and 

 night all the year round, to shoot just what they please ! 

 For who is to look after them on their own ground to 

 see that they do not destroy scheduled species ? They 

 must be always shooting something ; that is simply a 

 reflex effect of the liberty they have and of the gun in 

 the hand. Killing becomes a pleasure to them, and 

 with or without reason or excuse they are always doing 

 it — always adding to the list of creatures to be extir- 

 pated, and when these fail adding others. " I know 

 perfectly well," said a keeper to me, " that the nightjar 

 is harmless ; I don't believe a word about its swallow- 

 ing pheasant's eggs, though many keepers think they 

 do. I shoot them, it is true, but only for pleasure." 

 So it has come about that wherever pheasants are strictly 

 preserved, hawks — including those that prey on mice, 

 moles, wasps, and small birds ; also the owls, and 

 all the birds of the crow family, saving the rook on 

 account of the landowner's sentiment in its favour ; 

 and after them the nightjar and the woodpeckers and 



