2 MUTTON BIRDS 



while to consider to what extent the dis- 

 tinction has been deserved and the responsi- 

 bility honoured. It is well also to consider what 

 steps can be taken, even at this, the eleventh hour, 

 to save our remaining species; and I should 

 here like, firstly, to state my emphatic belief that 

 this subject should be altogether removed from 

 the field of sentiment, and secondly, to plead with 

 Mrs. Gamp that if I do call my fellow-citizens 

 names it is only done to 'rouse them. ' It may be 

 at once admitted that humanity can survive 

 without the rarer and more recluse birds. The 

 race could exist without the more beautiful orders 

 of flowering plants, without music, and without 

 art, but if anything is true it is that 'man does 

 not live by bread alone. ' We do not most highly 

 prize the necessaries of life, but rather the 

 delicacies of taste and sight and hearing, 

 the pleasures of our leisure hours. 



This modest claim, I think, may be fairly urged 

 in regard to birds, that by the extirpation of 

 species, a potential source of happiness is denied 

 to the coming generations, and furthermore, 

 that without the possibility of full investigation 

 structures may be forever lost that bind the 

 present to the past. I believe myself there is no 

 more cruelty in the killing of Humming-Birds 

 than in the slaughter of Turkeys. The awful 

 difference lies in this, that in the one case 

 there is the possibility of the annihilation of a 

 species and in the other no likelihood of such an 

 event. The subject should be one of the living 

 interests of our world, approachable without 

 crocodile tears, and to be dealt with as men of the 

 world deal with affairs of the world. Perhaps 

 bird-nesting is to be condemned, but often I 



