Lost British Birds. 3 



illustrated volumes. If any reader, possessing such a work, 

 really wishes to know just how we stand in this matter, and 

 does not mind sacrificing his book in the process of the 

 inquiry, he may get the desired knowledge hy adopting the 

 following simple plan : 



To begin with, he will find that his work contains life- 

 histories and coloured figures of about 400 species, possibly 

 more a large number, considering the smallness of the 

 country and its climatic conditions. But alas ! he must 

 learn that our island is " an inn for the wayfaring of birds " ; 

 that many of these species are nothing but stragglers and 

 waifs, blown, some of them, hundreds, others thousands of 

 miles out of their course ; and that they are in no true 

 sense British birds, and are only called so because a few 

 individuals have alighted to rest on our shores, just as a 

 lost bird at sea alights on a ship. Let him then begin by 

 tearing out all the plates of, and the letterpress relating to, 

 these wanderers from the distant parts of Europe, from 

 Africa, Asia and America the great black woodpecker, 

 cream-coloured courser, flamingo, yellow-billed cuckoo, and 

 many more about 150 in all. His work will have then 

 lost much of its beauty; it will have an attenuated and 

 rather sorry appearance; but it will require more rough 

 handling yet. On going further into the matter he will 

 find that about twenty of the remaining species are only 

 occasional visitors : the great grey shrike, woodchat, golden 

 oriole, wax- wing, Lapland bunting, rose-coloured pastor, 

 hoopoe, roller, bee-eater, and so on to the end of the list 

 beautiful birds, large arid small. These must be got rid of 

 in the same summary way : one's regret at losing them is all 

 the keener for the knowledge that some of them are 

 summer visitors that have tried to breed and colonize in 

 our country and have not been allowed to do so. 



The weeding-out process has now brought us down to the 

 species that are actually extinct, and to those whose extinc- 

 tion is imminent probably thirty in number. It is useless 

 to keep any of these : some are lost, and the others are so 

 reduced in numbers that it is well nigh impossible to get a 



B 2 



