40 GAME PRESERVERS AXD BIRD PRESERVERS. 



cealment or in flight.' JSTo doubt, besides cer- 

 tain naturalists, it is our falconers who are 

 anxious to make birds of prey more numerous ; 

 but what would our keenest coursers think of a 

 proposal that greyhounds should be allowed to 

 breed wild, that they might have the pleasure 

 of seeing a course occasionally without being 

 at the expense of keeping up a kennel ? 



When any account of the destruction caused 

 by wild hawks appears in any of the papers, 

 quite a little clique rush to the rescue, and as- 

 suming a monopoly of all knowledge of the 

 habits of birds, try to prove their favourite 

 innocent, though they get involved in the most 

 hopeless contradictions. To read what they 

 write one would fancy that hawks fed on insects 

 and grass during the spring and summer, though 

 occasionally in the autumn, in a fit of rough 

 playfulness, they will kill a bird which by a 

 provision of Nature is always a weakly one. 

 One gentleman told us not long ago, that if we 

 would only study natural history we should not 



