152 BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 



the price of late years offered for their eggs, has 

 caused a sensible diminution in their numbers. After 

 the mild winter of 1862-3, these birds were more 

 than usually plentiful at Hickling in the following 

 spring, and from this locality alone about five dozen 

 eggs were procured by one individual, nominally a 

 collector, but in reality a dealer, who thus for the sake 

 of a few shillings would go far towards exterminating 

 this beautiful species (many old birds being also killed 

 at the time), whose numbers we have no reason to sup- 

 pose are replenished by continental migrants. Already 

 in one or two districts, where only a few years back 

 they were very plentiful, scarcely a pair or two to my 

 knowledge can now be found in the breeding season. 

 Happily our more common and useful species are, by 

 recent legislation, protected in some degree from whole- 

 sale and indiscriminate slaughter ; can no law* be 

 made applicable to the preservation of other indigenous 

 and ornamental races, whose extinction would be a 

 continual source of regret to every lover of nature ? 

 From enquiries made amongst the older broad-men in 

 different localities, I find no reason to believe that these 

 birds, as has been occasionally remarked, were not 

 known in this county till of late years, and in Sir Wm. 

 Hooker's MS., the entries in which were made some 

 fifty or sixty years ago, I find the following note : 

 " This beautiful bird is by no means unfrequent in the 



* So particular was the old Mosaic law upon this very point, 

 that we find its injunctions coupled even with promises of reward 

 for obedience, as in the following passage from Deutronomy, 

 chap, xxii., v. 6 and 7 : " If a bird's nest chance to be before thee 

 in the way in any tree, or on the ground, whether they be young 

 ones, or eggs, and the dam sitting upon the young, or upon the 

 eggs, thou shalt not take the dam with the young : But thou shalt 

 in any wise let the dam go, and take the young to thee ; that it 

 may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days." 



