"TRESPASSERS" 113 



lands, by which they have become unsuited 

 to the needs of their former occupants. If 

 game-preservers desire to make such changes 

 largely answerable for the reduction in number of 

 many species accustomed to breed in these areas, it 

 is obvious that the more effectively such causes 

 operate in thinning their ranks, the more culpable 

 becomes the co-operation of human agents. If a 

 bird is expatriated by the advance of agriculture, is 

 it to be extirpated by the whim of sport ? In any 

 case, whatever be the share of the game-preserver 

 in this work of extirpation, there is one charge that 

 but a very small number of the more sportsman- like 

 of them will repel they have done their utmost to 

 make it complete. What is left is left not by grace, 

 but through inability wholly to slaughter off birds 

 that have reached their present eminence of beauty, 

 power and craft by ages of struggle more than man, 

 as such, has endured, and are still game for the 

 fight with half a chance in a fair field. 



Some birds have at all times such protection as 

 law can afford, others during the breeding season 

 only ; but birds such as those enumerated above 

 have no close season. Indeed, the breeding season 

 is the time best adapted to, and most used for their 

 slaughter, this being the time when for a few weeks 

 they have a settled abode, so that they may be shot 

 upon the nest, or in their passage to and from it. 



That the use of that infernal engine, the pole -trap, 

 has been made penal, we have to thank a few 

 enlightened legislators with a backing of public 

 opinion, as against many of our game-preservers who 

 sanctioned, but refrained from defending its use. 



