26 Spring 



amateur is not a whit more merciful. ' I must tell 

 you to shoot an unknown bird on sight ; it may give 

 you the slip in a moment and a prize may be lost/ 

 says the author of ' Field and General Ornithology ; ' 

 and there never was a precept more regularly acted 

 upon. The misfortune is, that so many of our visitors 

 are unknown in this sense. On the Cambridge and 

 Oxon hills, which once were visited by flights of 

 dotterel, this bird, when he halts for a day en route 

 to his hilly breeding-grounds, is annually shot as a 

 stranger, and will soon be driven from our shores. 

 Of the golden orioles one sees in provincial exhi- 

 bitions and museums, nearly all are in full breeding 

 plumage, and in some cases were confessedly slain 

 while constructing the hanging nest they attach to a 

 forked bough. 



The worst sufferers, however, are undoubtedly the 

 birds of prey, those that of all others most enhance 

 the beauty of landscape ; for there is not in the realm 

 of wings anything more beautiful than the sight of a 

 white skua hawking along a rocky coast, a hen harrier 

 quartering the meadows like a setter, an eagle swoop- 

 ing from his eyrie. But the stuffer knows well that 

 for these he has a ready custom. An owl with beady 

 eyes looking down on a mouse in its talons, a 

 sparrow-hawk holding a young partridge, a jay or a 

 magpie making off with eggs these are representa- 

 tions of life dear to the heart of a certain type of 

 householder. ' I have seen,' says Mr. Aplin in his 



