AN APPEAL. 



I should like to make a very earnest appeal to all lovers 

 and students of Nature against the all too common evil of 

 taking life unnecessarily, and the plundering of birds' nests 

 that stand in urgent need of protection. There have been 

 men who have killed for the mere lust of killing ; some who 

 have created a demand for British birds' skins and clutches of 

 eggs ; and others who have supplied this demand relentlessly ; 

 and as the natural sequel to such wholesale and indiscriminate 

 slaughter and trafficking, we are on the verge of finding several 

 kinds of our beautiful birds extinct, and many species, not so 

 long ago common, now rare, and increasingly so. It has been 

 proved that some kinds will, if protected, take up their abode 

 with us, and upon the present generation devolves the happy 

 task of affording to their utmost all the necessary facilities a 

 rare bird must perforce have nowadays, to enable it to regain 

 or uphold its status among our British Avifauna. 



It is brought very poignantly home to us that unprincipled 

 destruction of birds and their eggs is intolerably selfish, for it 

 is with very harrowed feelings that one walks abroad to-day 

 and finds the country-side less rich in its avifauna than it 

 should be. Personally, and I am sure many will concur, I 

 should like to see fewer obituary notices of birds in the papers 

 devoted to Ornithology. 



But if birds must be shot, and eggs taken, let it be carried 

 on with discretion, and only as a means towards the always 

 worthy end the furtherance of our knowledge in this ever- 

 interesting science. Let us lay down the gun more often, and 

 take up the field-glasses. At least the latter "weapon " is worth 

 a trial, and I most confidently believe that he who does so 

 will speedily agree with me when I say that all creatures are 

 vastly more interesting alive and enjoying their unrestrained 

 freedom, than when consigned lifeless and mummified to the 

 dark recesses of a cabinet. 



E. F. M. ELMS. 



London, 1906. 



