PREFACE. 



Those who have watched with satisfaction and, each in 

 his measure, done their best to promote the growth of 

 modern feehng in favour of protecting wild birds cannot 

 have failed to feel some dissatisfaction at the complexity 

 of the legislation which is the outcome of that feeling. 

 Besides the Game Laws there are, as Mr. Holte Macpherson 

 has pointed out (p. 18), eight public Acts in force in the 

 United Kingdom applying to bird-protection, " in addition 

 to endless County Protection Orders and the enactments of 

 the local legislative bodies of the Channel Islands and the 

 Isle of Man." Herein, if anywhere, is a crying case for 

 codification, and Mr. Macpherson has rendered excellent 

 assistance to any one who shall be charged to undertake it 

 by his careful abstract of the laws in force in foreign 

 countries. For, in dealing with so mobile a population as 

 birds, legislation in one country ought to dovetail with that 

 of other countries. For instance, the Dutch law which 

 prohibits the capture, killing or sale of peewits (p. 6), if it 

 is to secure protection for that most beneficent species, 

 ought to have a parallel in the United Kingdom, where tens 

 of thousands of peewits are offered for sale annually in 

 London, to be eaten in restaurants as golden plovers. 

 Again, the French edict for the Department of the Seine, 

 prohibiting the placing of nets or traps for taking birds 

 en masse ought to be reflected in a British edict which should 

 put a stop to the destructive shore nets, whereby ruffs and 

 reeves, once so abundant, have become one of our rarest 

 species, and many other desirable kinds of fowl are massacred 

 every winter indiscriminately. Inasmuch as most of the 

 birds of Western Europe pass seasonally from one country 

 to another in that region, it follows that protective legislation, 

 to be effective, should be homogeneous. 



