5 6 Summer Studies of Birds and Books CHAP. 



man. I have known this district for thirty years, and 

 as far as I can see the great birds are as abundant as 

 ever ; but when once the egg-dealer has found them 

 out (and that he has found them out here I know too 

 well), it can only be a question of time. These hills 

 are not such as afford them many nesting-places that 

 are utterly inaccessible ; and when their strongholds 

 have been stormed year by year for a while they will 

 give up the game and die or depart. 



But as yet the process of extermination has not 

 gone nearly as far as the lamentations of Mr. Hudson 

 would lead us to suppose. 1 In 1869, when I spent 

 some weeks in one of these valleys, the cry of the 

 Buzzards was the daily accompaniment to our studies 

 of Aristotle and Livy. In 1894, a few miles from 

 the same spot, it was still possible to lie on the 

 crest of a hill and watch two, three, or even four of 

 these noble birds soaring overhead at the same time. 

 Eavens I do not remember in the old days, but of 

 ornithology I then knew nothing. In the spring of 

 the present year they were numerous, and many a 

 sickly lamb on the mountains had his young eyes 

 hacked out by those terrible bills of theirs. 2 While 



1 See his pamphlet issued by the Society for the Protection of 

 Birds, entitled Lost British Birds ; the value of which I readily 

 acknowledge, irritating as it is in some ways to those who have 

 lived all their lives in England. 



2 That this is often the case I was assured by the farmer with 

 whom I lodged last spring in this district. 



