Robbery from Nature 25 



museums necessary to scientific research, to give the 

 artist enough of specimens to draw from, and even to 

 satisfy the amateur as long as his numbers do not 

 inordinately multiply, and he is content with the 

 result of his own exertions. But her riches are not 

 inexhaustible, and if the rage for collecting is allowed 

 to go on developing at its present rate, in a country 

 so densely populated as England, it must soon result 

 in a very serious diminution of our avi-fauna. It puts 

 as it were the finishing-touch upon the destruction 

 necessary to agriculture and game-preserving. We 

 drain mere and lake, and the bittern that boomed 

 from t ne Lincolnshire fens and the swampy regions 

 round the upper Isis and the Border mires and bogs is 

 driven from a home to which if he attempts to return 

 he is a target for the collector's gun ; even the very 

 curlew has to retreat as the ploughshare rives up the 

 waste land above which he loves to pipe his melan- 

 choly tune. As soon as ever a bird grows sufficiently 

 scarce to possess a money value, it is hardly possible 

 for it to escape ; not 'because amateurs are so numerous 

 and vigilant, but because the net of the dealer is spread 

 so wide. There is hardly a pot-hunter or shore-prowler 

 who does not know the value of a specimen, and it is a 

 common practice to blaze away on chance at any large 

 or unusual bird, whether it be a rare visitor like the night 

 heron or an estray from an ornamental water like the 

 tame swans of Lord Ducie's that fell victims to a zeal 

 for natural history. When abroad with his gun the 



