10 ON THE SEA-BIEDS PKESEKVATIO.V ACT, 



may be followed up and the whole covey obtained on a limited 

 tract of land. 



Many persons believe they can treat the Woodcock like the 

 Pheasant, and suppose he will alter his character by protection 

 during the breeding season. He is a wanderer by nature, and 

 you cannot clip his wings in order to make him stay, and no 

 protection here in summer will make any appreciable addition 

 to his numbers in winter. Far be it for any one to imagine I 

 wish him interfered with during breeding time, but as he gene- 

 rally keeps to woods, let the owners look after him when there, 

 and do not enact new laws for his safety. 



Nothing having life except man can be cruel ; he alone is 

 endowed with mind, and is capable of knowing right from wrong. 

 Lions, Tigers, Hawks, and Dragon-flies were all created to be 

 selfish, and in all their depredations they are only carrying out 

 their Creator's intentions, and we have no right to call them 

 cruel. Our doing so is setting aside the Creator's wisdom in 

 having made them. I contend that any one killing the appa- 

 rently most innocent and inoffensive creature for inspection or 

 admiration is not cruel ; in fact quite the reverse, for by so doing 

 he is honouring his Creator by admiring and wondering at the 

 operation of His power. Cruelty consists in the wanton and 

 thoughtless killing, or sanctioning the killing, unnecessarily, of 

 any kinds of living things, all of which, even the most repul- 

 sive, were created for some good purpose, which perhaps man, 

 with all his intellect, cannot at once perceive. There are many 

 who would be very severe in condemning another for killing a 

 rare bird or butterfly, but who daily sanction the killing of a 

 Hawk, when there is really this difference only, the one is pro- 

 bably killed for a good purpose, and the person who killed it has 

 some thing to look at for the remainder of his life with pleasure, 

 whilst the other is killed for mere caprice or fashion, as in all 

 probability the day after it would have been far away from the 

 district never to return, and therefore the injury it could possibly 

 inflict was only imaginary. Perhaps, too, the treasure the for- 

 mer had secured might have been destroyed immediately after 

 in the ordinary course of nature, so that it mattered little to it, 



