BIRD! PROTECTION. 141 
Tit and the Dartford Warbler; and the others that belong to somewhat 
the same class are the Great Crested Grebe, the Dotterel, the Roseate 
Tern, and the Chough. These birds need protection badly, and it is not 
too late to give it them. If the existing laws concerning the close season 
were rigorously enforced, three of them would be protected enough, as 
they leave this country in the autumn. Special measures should be taken 
in the case of the first two and the last. 
Our other birds may be divided into two classes. First come the 
rarer migrants. Concerning the shooting of these stragglers there is always 
the greatest outcry, whereas they are just the ones that matter least. 
There is no chance of their becoming British species in the proper sense 
of the term; they are mostly common enough in their real habitat, and 
the shooting of these odd birds makes no difference whatever to the chance 
of their appearing in England another year. ‘They have got separated 
from their species and proper home, and are doomed. I say, without 
hesitation, that the best fate that can befall them is to be shot by 
someone who can appreciate their beauties. Bluethroats must often have 
visited the Norfolk coast before Dr. Power discovered them. How many 
people got any pleasure out of those visits? If I meet a Dartford Warbler 
it is to me a sacred bird, but if I meet a Bluethroat I shoot it, to present 
it to one of the numerous institutions which are only too glad to get a 
specimen of the bird. It is thus seen by more people than if it passed 
another week in England on its way to a lingering death. 
Secondly, there come the bulk of our commoner birds; I doubt whether 
any of these have become rarer in recent years. The establishment of the 
existing close season seems to have just met the case so far as they are 
concerned. Birds like Hawfinches and Goldfinches are unquestionably on 
the increase in nearly every part of England. 
Such is the situation as it stands to-day. What are the chief dangers 
that threaten the birds, and what are the existing measures and proposals 
designed to grapple with them ? 
Passing by as much exaggerated the danger which awaits our threatened 
species from the amateur collector, on the ground that he is usually satisfied 
with a single pair, I would suggest that the birds have most to fear from 
three classes of individual—the shore-shooter, who goes out for mere 
slaughter; the man who shoots to provide the trade, whether it be that of 
the London naturalist or the milliner; and the ordinary country bird-catcher. 
To counteract the efforts of these worthies, there is at present a law 
protecting nearly all birds from the beginning of February until the end 
