61 



SANCTUARIES. 



The increase of special areas of protection will presumably 

 become more marked in the future. The recognition of the 

 importance of preserving bird life, and the difficulty of recon- 

 ciling it with large and increasing population, make sanctuaries 

 desirable, even necessary. In Switzerland they have long 

 existed for game, and chains of such districts are being established 

 in the United States of America. In Great Britain the number 

 of large estates, usually also game preserves, must have done 

 much in the past to uphold our avifauna, notwithstanding the 

 shortcomings of keepers. And, with the growing interest in 

 ornithology, let us hope that in the future owners and keepers 

 win more generally respond to the needs of the wild birds that are 

 not game. No State action could be so effective as the well- 

 directed sheltering and watching carried out on large private 

 estates, and at the present day there must be many such 

 sanctuaries available by the use of a little diplomacy and arrange- 

 ment. 



CONVENTION, 1902. 



One would like to know Great Britain's reasons for holding 

 aloof from the Paris Convention. The moral weight of British 

 support would have done service to the cause ; in fact, the 

 whole scheme is weakened and made ineffective by the want of 

 unanimity among the Powers. To this may probably, in part 

 at least, be ascribed the fiasco the Convention made in France, 

 which would hardly have stultified itself as it did after signing 

 the Convention, if England and Italy had endorsed the proposals.. 

 The stultification lay in the passing of the " tolerance project of 

 resolution " of November 20, 1906, eighteen days before the 

 Convention proposals became law ; which " resolution " 

 virtually strangled the law at birth. England, Russia, and 

 Italy hold back from the international scheme. The geogra- 

 phical positions of the former two, and the usages of their people, 

 make their concurrence of shght importance to the European, 

 avifauna compared with the concurrence of Italy, one of the high 

 roads of migration and a winter sojourn of many species of 

 European birds. This is the real severed artery in Europe's 

 avine circulation. 



The greater part of the proposals of the 1902 Convention was 

 already in force as law in Austria-Hungary, Germany, and 

 Switzerland before the Convention was signed. If all Europe 

 would codify this scheme into law, the cause of bird-preservatioix 

 would be assured. 



