THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS 149 



an officer of the 54th Regiment may be taken as a 

 specimen of many similar communications : 



" I have from time to time read with great interest 

 your letters on bird preservation. Pray agitate the 

 small bird question once more. I was at East- 

 bourne last summer, and for the first time, and the 

 last, I hope, in my life, 1 witnessed a bird murder. 

 There was a grand sparrow match advertised be- 

 tween Mr. A. of Blank, and Mr. B. of Somewhere ; 

 the match was twenty-one birds, H. or I. traps, 

 for 20, eighteen yards' distance, bounds forty 

 yards. 



"The match was duly shot. A lantern-jawed 

 man attended with twelve dozen sparrows and three 

 dozen linnets. The birds were so thickly packed 

 in cages that they must have been either silly or 

 stunned before being put into a trap about the size 

 of a quarter-pound cigar-box. The noble sports- 

 men each stood ready, one with his gun at the 

 shoulder, pointed at the trap (the bore of the gun 

 being wide enough to admit an ordinary thumb), 

 the other with the gun at the hip, so that the latter 

 shooter's style had a latent semblance of sportsman- 

 ship. The match being over, Jones, Brown, and 

 Robinson, and other sportsmen present, shot handi- 

 cap matches, and the whole fifteen dozen birds were 

 shot at. 



"This is a short account of one of a hundred 

 per diem probably, and unless a stop is put to it 

 the small birds must be annihilated. They are 

 captured wholesale by the bat-fowlers, and in the 



