CHANGE OF SEASONS AND OF THE TIMES. 275 



Binding my narration, as far as I can, to or- 

 nithological notes, who ever suspected (I am sure 

 I did not) that a graceful and ijvotective measure 

 for wild and beautiful birds should have cnui- 

 nated from the Gladstone Government, or, at all 

 events, from its mistaken supporters? yet I find 

 myself hand and heart with the protective Wild 

 Birds' Bill, brought in, to my surprise, by Mr. 

 Auberon Herbert, and afterwards dealt with by 

 Lord Malmesbury. 



The next thing in the change going on that 

 I might expect to find, would be a Bill brought 

 in by my former antagonist, Mr. John Bright, 

 for the better protection of rabbits against the 

 political plotting of some tenant farmers, and this 

 he might honestly do on the score of an increase 

 of food for the people ; but in that instance there 

 would not be quite so muclij^eason for astonishment, 

 as it is now known what a vast amount of the 

 poorer population in the United Kingdom subsist 

 on rabbits — the dealers in them, under-selling the 

 butcher, and tlierefore raising the tenant farmer's 

 wrath.* 



* In this allusion to tlie "Tenant Farmer," I merely mean to 

 attach to some few of them, but by no means to the majority, a 



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