286 GOLDFINCHES 



inducement to them. Immediately the bird-catchers set 

 to work. I appealed to the chief constable, who declared 

 he had no power to interfere. I produced the list of birds 

 scheduled by the county council for protection all the 

 year round, and there, sure enough, was our little friend 

 Carduelis elegans, and in the end we got the traffic 

 stopped. It is certain that similar want of acquaintance 

 with the law is the cause of illegal trade being prosecuted 

 in other counties. Quite recently a correspondent of 

 Country Life described how he had seen several boxes of 

 wild birds larks, goldfinches, linnets, and thrushes at 

 Portsmouth station consigned to a dealer in Manchester. 

 I shall be surprised if the county council of Hampshire, 

 the home of Gilbert White of Selborne, be found to lend 

 its sanction to these proceedings. For, mark you, the 

 barbarity of it consists not merely in consigning thousands 

 of innocent wildlings to lifelong captivity, subject to all 

 the diseases brought by imprisonment upon creatures of 

 unceasing activity ; but by far the great majority of them 

 die in transit. Only a trifling percentage survive to 

 become the pets, yet not less the victims, of their ultimate 

 purchasers. The rate of mortality in snared birds, could 

 it be accurately ascertained, would startle the tender- 

 hearted mistresses of the little prisoners whom they 

 cherish. 



Howbeit, one should recognise gratefully the spread of 

 a considerate love of wild birds among all classes of the 

 community. The press has done laudable work in pro- 

 moting this feeling, even among people whose lot lies far 

 from rural sights and sounds, amid the din and dusk of 

 great cities. Perhaps, as time goes on, the growth of that 

 higher intelligence which has redeemed us from the 



