28 Lost British Birds. 



nesting in a few of the wildest and most extensive moor- 

 lands in England and Wales." This was written some six 

 or seven years ago ; if a few pairs of Hen Harriers have 

 survived to the present time I shall he glad to know it. 



The loss of these extinct hawks, and of others that are 

 threatened with extinction, is greatly to be deplored. To 

 say nothing of their value to us because they are what they 

 are parts of that harmonious and infinitely complex 

 system which the mind contemplates with inexhaustible 

 delight they are necessary to the health of the system. 

 They are, as Canon Tristram has aptly said, the " sanitary 

 police of nature " ; and their action in removing the weak- 

 lings and the infected, and in keeping all creatures that are 

 liable to be preyed on by them perpetually on the alert, is 

 wholly beneficial, and the chief cause of that undimmed 

 health, boundless vigour, and bright intelligence character- 

 istic of wild animal life. 



These are familiar truths, but unhappily they have been, 

 and continue to be, disregarded by our landowners the one 

 class that had it in their power to preserve the bird popu- 

 lation to the country in something like its original varied 

 character. The desire for a large head of game, a big au- 

 tumnal " shoot " the ignoble ambition to transform a great 

 estate into a kind of glorified poultry-farm, where you shoot 

 your birds, instead of catching them in the usual way and 

 wringing their necks has overbalanced all other con- 

 siderations. Hence the partridge and pheasant coddling 

 policy, and the pitiless persecution of all birds whose 

 presence is, or is ignorantly supposed to be, a check on the 

 excessive multiplication of the one or two species chosen for 

 preservation. 



On the other side it may be said that the careful preserva- 

 tion of partridges, and still more of pheasants, affords 

 protection to incalculable numbers of small birds ; not only 

 from " vermin," but also from human beings who kill birds 

 and pull their nests down, merely for the pleasure of so 

 doing. To those, then, who are satisfied so long as we 

 possess an abundance of bird life, however few the species 



