Vlll PREFACE . 



representatives of the species on their migratory course 

 may visit our shores in spring ; for these, too, are seek- 

 ing some far off home, and the local race may thus pass 

 away for ever. 



Surely the success which has already attended the 

 passing of the Sea-Birds Preservation Bill, should 

 encourage its promoters to seek an extension of its 

 powers so as to secure a " close time " as well for all 

 waders and wild fowl. Of the beneficial effects of such 

 an Act there can be no question, judging only from my 

 own experience during the last few years of the result 

 of careful preservation, within a limited area, and yet 

 nothing short of a legal penalty will deter a certain 

 class of sportsmen (?) from shooting Snipe long after the 

 pairing season has commenced, or even killing a Wild 

 Duck from her nest if unfortunately met with at the 

 same time. Remonstrance is in vain with such persons, 

 who, accustomed year after year to perpetrate such 

 enormities, are lost to all sense of shame. In fact, 

 they can be classed only with those summer " excursion- 

 ists" both in the North and South of England, whose 

 holiday " sport" until very recently consisted in the 

 wholesale slaughter of brooding Gulls and Guillemots; 

 and if such birds, for their beauty, their cries of warning 

 to the mariner, or simply on the ground of abolishing 

 a cruel practice, are to receive protection during the 

 breeding season, why not also our waders and wild- 

 fowl, exquisite alike in form and action, and comprising 

 many species that, in due season, rank amongst the 

 greatest delicacies of the table, and which, in spite of 

 the altered features of the country through drainage 

 and cultivation* would still, under a protective system 



marshes, and the Bittern, which, though extinct for some years 

 prior to 1866, has since that time been both heard and seen at 

 Hoveton during the summer months, and a nestling and eggs have 

 been procured at Upton. 



* In "Land and Water" for August 5th, 1870, are some extracts 



