"TRESPASSERS" 123 



their wish that the finer British birds should be shot 

 in the interest of game birds. They are, as they 

 would say, not at all interested in the finer British 

 birds to wish them harm or otherwise. But, if they 

 threaten the coverts, why, then the coverts must be 

 protected. That seems quite final to them. 



But ''must?" upon what compulsion must they? 

 Here are we back again to our Mutton-chop Ethics. 

 A bird that may be eaten must be protected from 

 one that cannot be eaten; a bird that in the killing 

 may afford facile sport to ourselves and our like, 

 must not be suffered to be killed by one that would 

 overtax our energy and skill, and probably fool us 

 through half a county. 



The great difficulty in discussing this matter is 

 that there is no common ground on which one can 

 approach such people. For, surrounded from birth 

 by an artificial atmosphere, the landed and leisured 

 classes are, for the most part, contented to exist. 

 With a false standard of worth all but inverting the 

 true and natural one, they feel that they have but to 

 live up to that standard, no incentive to advance 

 being present. They bore themselves and one 

 another by idle flummeries which they denominate 

 "society." But, if you throw Nature out of the 

 window she will come back by the door ; and with 

 the advent of a Twelfth of August or a First of 

 September, the better of them, the better, I say, 

 jaded to death by the stupid round of conventionality, 

 fling out and make their way to moor and covert 

 with almost fanatical zeal. It is a return to Nature 

 in a sense ; to such Nature, at least, as minds oscil- 

 lating between the savage and the sybarite can 



