INTRODUCTION. 15 
section 2 of this order!) does not extend.’ The con- 
sequence is that although the Black-backed Gulls are 
protected during the greater part of the year in the 
coast parishes, yet from March Ist to August 12th, the 
season when they need protection most, they may be 
shot by owners and occupiers of the land on which 
they are found. 
The existing regulations are flagrantly violated by 
game-preservers and their keepers; and Kestrels and 
Owls, although specially protected, are, on most shoot- 
ings, ruthlessly slain and their eggs destroyed when- 
ever opportunity offers. There can indeed be little 
doubt that, if wild birds are to reap the benefit of the 
existing legislation, all ornithologists and lovers of 
birds must use their influence and knowledge to see 
that the law is properly enforced. 
GAME-PRESERVATION. 
In sporting districts the influence of game-pre- 
servation, direct and indirect, upon the avifauna is very 
great and far-reaching. This is eminently the case in 
an agricultural county like Cheshire, where Pheasants 
and Partridges are preserved universally in the low- 
lands, and Grouse in the moorland districts. Incessant 
war is waged against predatory birds and mammals, 
whilst other creatures, inimical to game and often of 
undoubted benefit to the agriculturist, are destroyed by 
biassed and indiscriminating gamekeepers. Individual 
keepers often acknowledge that certain species, such as 
Owls and the Kestrel, are practically harmless to game, 
but still they shoot and trap them, partly from long- 
established custom, but chiefly because their masters 
1 Section 2 extends the close season from August Ist to August 12th. 
