THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS 139 



These, with many others, might be quoted to show 

 the diversified channels in which his sympathies 

 were exercised in the cause of humanity to animals. 

 A few years later he drew up another lengthy 

 petition to Parliament, which was first published in 

 The Animal World, with a view to inviting sugges- 

 tions for improvement in the form of it. He argued 

 that luxuries should be taxed before anything else ; 

 that gamekeepers are luxuries, and that therefore they 

 should be heavily taxed. The amount suggested for 

 such tax was ^20. Then he would have had a prohi- 

 bitory law passed against the use of iron traps, thus 

 doing away with an untold amount of cruelty. He 

 instanced the case of a farmer in a district where 

 weasels, &c., had been destroyed, who had killed 

 in one instance in his stack-yard upwards of 2500 

 rats between the previous autumn and that spring; 

 of another who had killed 600 in a short space of 

 time; and of a third who had destroyed 80 under a 

 small bean-stack not much bigger than a hay-cock. 

 He argued, further, that " the battue, being an un- 

 English sport, and only of French origin, as its name 

 imports, should be made of use, as a foreign luxury, 

 for the revenue of the country, and that a license of 

 20 be paid for every one engaging in a battue ; and, 

 further, that all game shot at such should be distri- 

 buted in equal proportions between the poor of the 

 parish in which the shooting takes place and the 

 county hospital of the same. That much Sunday 

 desecration is caused by the capture and sale of 

 small birds ; that, therefore, this should be pro- 



