THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS 145 



said at the time by those who wished to raise a 

 laugh at the expense of the protector of the sea- 

 birds, that if only the said boatmen could have 

 induced him to enter one of their craft there was 

 no telling what they might have done with him ! 

 Even thus, however, he might have caused them 

 some little trouble and disappointment, for he was 

 both lithe of limb and an excellent swimmer withal ! 

 As a matter of fact, he wished them no harm what- 

 ever, and in a little book he brought out upon 

 the subject, called the "Sea-Gull Shooter," he made 

 this plain when he said at the outset : 



" I should be sorry indeed if a single word in this 

 small book should be, or even should be considered 

 to be, of the slightest injury to any of my good friends 

 the boatmen of our Yorkshire coast. Coming of a 

 naval family myself, I cannot but love the sea, and 

 everybody and everything connected with it, and 

 therefore that would be the very last thing that I 

 could or would wish to do. 



"On the contrary, I am sure that the more our 

 sea-birds are preserved the better it will be for those 

 boatmen who may be engaged to take out the visi- 

 tors at our watering-places to see that wonderful 

 and most interesting sight, the birds in their native 

 home, ' the stupendous cliffs of Speeton,' as 

 Waterton well calls them Crow Shoot, 410 feet ; 

 Jordan's Leap, 436 feet ; and Speeton Beacon, 444 

 feet, sheer down to the sea. But if the birds, be- 

 sides those that are killed, are frightened off by the 

 shots that echo against and from those weird head- 



K 



