38 



The Statute of 1896 went a step further m giving the Court 

 power on a conviction, in addition to any fine, to order any trap, 

 net, snare or decoy bird used for taking any wild bird to be for- 

 feited.* And more recently still, in 1902, another Act was 

 passed, still further extending the po^ver of ordering forfeiture 

 to the birds or eggs illegally taken.! 



The Paris Convention does not suggest any particular form of 

 penalty ; it simply leaves the contracting parties to enforce the 

 terms in such manner as they maj^ think fit. But under the 

 American Model Law the penalties suggested are severe : fines 

 in respect of each offence and additional fines in respect of each 

 specimen unlawfully taken, or imprisonment, or both. J Im- 

 prisonment is a drastic punishment, and has, as far as we know, 

 never been proposed in Great Britain, though it might well be 

 added to our list of penalties for second or very gross offences, 

 and, as we have seen, imprisonment can be ordered in some cases 

 in France. The introduction of forfeiture of specimens in 1902 

 was, however, a most salutary move, and this punishment is 

 likely to prove a more effectual deterrent than the infliction of 

 fines. Much of the havoc among birds, and even more so among 

 eggs, has been wrought either by amateur collectors in comfortable 

 circumstances, to whom a small fine means nothing, or by the 

 professional dealer, to whom it only means slightly raising the 

 market value of the specimen. 



In the matter of punishment, our law is now on very much the 

 same footing as that of Switzerland, where, as we have seen, 

 in addition to fines, the specimens taken and the traps and im- 

 plements used for the purpose may be confiscated. It will be 

 remembered that similar provision is made by the laws of various 

 other lands — by Spain, Belgium and Holland. 



In America, as in England, a great deal of work in the cause of 

 bird-protection has been done by Societies ; but we have here 

 nothing to correspond to the Wardens in the United States of 

 America or the Field- Police of Hungarj'^ ; or, in our own colonies, 

 to the Rangers in Queensland, the Wardens in some parts of 

 Canada, or the Inspectors in West Australia, whose duty it is 

 to see that the law is observed.§ It is, unfortunately, the fact 

 that many of the private individuals most enthusiastic in their 

 support of bird-protection have a not unnatural horror of legal 

 proceedings, and are insufficiently informed in the laws relating 

 to the subject ; they are therefore not competent to procure 

 convictions even in cases Avhere the law has been flagrantly 

 broken. However stringent a law on any subject may be, it 



* 59 & 60 Vict., Chap. 56, Sect. 4. 



t 2 Ed. VII., Chap. 6. f Sect. 3. § See page 50. 



