NOVEMBER 257 



LXI 



It must have been disagreeable to all naturalists who 

 are true sportsmen, and to all sportsmen who spare the 

 love wild nature, to read a long paper recently oiew 

 in a leading sporting journal about shooting curlews. 

 The writer described with exultation how he had 

 destroyed between 200 and 300 of these quaint and 

 interesting birds by lying in wait for them on their 

 feeding grounds. Now one cannot blame shore-poppers, 

 who live by the produce of the gun, for bagging any 

 birds that they cannot dispose of in the market, at 

 however low a figure ; but to attempt to elevate the 

 destruction of curlews to the rank of sport by publishing 

 directions how it can best be accomplished, seems a 

 regrettable action on the part of a journal which we 

 look to for maintaining the chivalrous traditions of 

 British sport. Surely there is plenty of legitimate 

 game in the British Isles for everybody who claims to 

 be a sportsman as distinguished from a pothunter. It 

 is otherwise in France and some other countries where 

 gibier is an elastic term, including song birds and every 

 bird that can be converted into petit rdt or ragout. 

 But in no sense consistently with the traditions of 

 British sport can curlews be reckoned among game 

 birds. They are edible, it is true, but nobody who has 

 eaten of one hankers much after a second helping. It 

 is simply deplorable if young shooters shooters for 

 sport, I mean, not for a bare living are to be encour- 

 aged to regard all wild birds as fair targets. The 

 curlew ought to be held as sacred among us as his 

 B 



