170 BIRD HAUNTS AND NATURE MEMORIES 



the best kept " reserves " for all birds, though their 

 owners rear pheasants and shoot game and wild-fowl. 

 The naturalist-sportsman often is the best bird protector. 



All sportsmen, unfortunately, are not naturalists, and 

 many a one cares little about the ethics of game preserva- 

 tion; he wants his pleasure, and it never enters his head 

 that the means by which he obtains it may be other than 

 right. The humanitarian roundly condemns the preserva- 

 tion of game, and indeed all sport, so far as the word is 

 applied to pastimes which involve the slaying of animals, 

 as immoral. His arguments are not unsound, but there 

 are fair replies to which he usually turns a deaf ear; we 

 must go to the humane sportsman or the scientific humani- 

 tarian to obtain a broad-minded view of the rights and 

 wrongs of sport, or, which is an important point, of the 

 wisdom of preserving a particular species for sporting 

 purposes. 



We are all hereditary sportsmen. From those far 

 distant ancestors who had to slay or starve we inherit 

 this love of the chase. In spite of advanced civilisation 

 we are yet children of the savage, each born into the world 

 uncivilised, primeval. Cruelty, alas ! seems to be childish 

 human nature; the child is cruel until it is taught other- 

 wise; therefore, if unconscious, it cannot be immoral 

 cruelty. Innocent thoughtlessness, and maybe a thirst 

 after knowledge and sensation, prompts the infant to 

 " pull the pussy's tail to make it yowl for fun," or rip legs 

 and wings from flies upon the pane. If the child has been 

 reproved, learnt what pain means, and repeats experi- 

 ments in private, delighting in the torments of its victims, 

 it is then cruel. Once the larger knowledge has been 

 acquired the question is entirely different; it is then a 

 subject for thought for the theologian and psychologist; 

 it may be for action by the medical man or criminologist. 

 The habits of the domestic dog and cat provide, to some 



