THE SACRED BIRD 91 



resents so much as being interfered with or advised or 

 instructed as to what species he is to spare. Tell 

 him to spare an owl or a kestrel and he instantly re- 

 solves to kill it ; and if you are such a faddist as to 

 want to preserve everything he will go so far as to 

 summon his little crowd of humble followers and 

 parasites and set them to make a clean sweep of all the 

 wild life in the woods, as in the instance I have de- 

 scribed. No, it is mere waste of energy to inform 

 individual owners of such abuses. The craze exists 

 for a big head of game, or rather of this exotic bird of 

 the woods, called in scorn and disgust the " sacred 

 bird " by one who was himself a naturalist and sports- 

 man ; the owners are themselves responsible for the 

 system and have created the class of men necessary 

 to enable them to follow this degraded form of sport. 

 I use the word advisedly : Mr. A. Stuart-Wortley, the 

 best authority I know on the subject, an enthusiast 

 himself, mournfully acknowledges in his book on the 

 pheasant that pheasant shooting as now almost univer- 

 sally conducted in England is not sport at all. 



One odd result of this over-protection of an exotic 

 species and consequent degradation of the woodlands 

 is that the bird itself becomes a thing disliked by the 

 lover of nature. No doubt it is an irrational feeling, 

 but a very natural one nevertheless, seeing that what- 

 soever is prized and cherished by our enemy, or the 

 being who injures us, must come in for something of 

 the feeling he inspires. There is always an overflow. 

 Personally I detest the sight of semi-domestic pheasants 



