25 



efforts of the watchers at such places as Wolferton, Blakeney 

 and Cley, Wells and Breydon, to name but a few, are entirely 

 supported by the voluntary subscriptions of a comparatively 

 small number of bird-lovers. It is not always realised how much 

 can be done in this way by land owners in England merely 

 enforcing the law of trespass without the aid of any Acts of 

 Parliament for the protection of wild birds. The smallest covert 

 carefully shielded from trespassers as a pheasant preserve becomes 

 a little sanctuary for many small species. 



PROHIBITION OF SALE OR POSSESSION. 



The question of the sale and possession of protected specimens, 

 whether of birds or eggs, has received a good deal of attention all 

 over the world. Our law* makes it penal to expose or offer for 

 sale or to have in control or possession after the 15th March 

 any wild bird " recently killed or taken." It is worthy of notice 

 that this does not apply to skins or plumage, but only to any 

 " wild bird recently killed or taken." The use of such a vague 

 expression as " recently killed " in a Statute cannot be too 

 severely deprecated. What is meant by " recently " has never 

 been clearly established, but, as already pointed out, the other 

 offences referred to in the same section become penal after the 

 1st March, so that " recently " probably was intended to mean 

 " within a fortnight. "f 



In 1881, however, it was provided that to a charge for exposing 

 or offering for sale, or having control or possession of a recently 

 killed bird after the 15th March, it should be a good defence to 

 prove either that the bird had been lawfully killed here or that 

 the bird had been killed abroad and imported ; and if the accused 

 can now prove it was imported, the onus of proving it was 

 killed here is thrown on the prosecution, f To any but a 

 lawyer this may appear involved. The effect is as follows. 

 A man may kill a hundred Lapwings in April in defiance 

 of the Wild Bird Protection Act of 1880, send them abroad, 

 get them sent back to him, and then expose them for sale 

 at Leadenhall Market. When prosecuted, all he need do is to 

 prove that they came to him from abroad, and leave his accusers 

 to prove that the birds were killed in a place to which our Act 

 of 1880 extends. How often the prosecution could perform 

 such a feat may be left to the imagination. § 



* 43 & 44 Vict., Chap. 35, Sect. 3. 



t See Marchant and Watkins' Wild Birds Protection Acts, pp. 40-41. 



J 44 & 45 Vict., Chap. 51, Sect. 1. 



§ The law on this point had previously gone through various changes. 

 Prior to 1880 exposing for sale during the prohibited season was a 

 penal offence, and under the Act of 1876 (one of those repeated in 



