"LIVE AND LET LIVE" 177 



per head of game, and the gamekeeper makes it his 

 business to destroy everything that is not game. 



By the easy-going process which once divided 

 the world into Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and bar- 

 barians, he divides the larger animals of his shoot 

 into game and vermin. The one instruction he 

 gives to his gamekeeper may be best summed up in 

 the impassioned utterance of the poor old brain- 

 stricken, tempest-riven King Lear 



" Then kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill ; " 



and the gamekeeper, with a right good will, obeys 

 his master and does 



Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill." 



Under these sinister influences, many of our 

 most interesting birds and animals are ceasing to 

 exist. The bustard and the bittern, owing to the 

 increase of the population and the reclamation of 

 the fens, are things of the long past. The buzzard, 

 the harrier, and the peregrine falcon are becoming 

 rarer and rarer. The fork-tailed kite is as dead as 

 Queen Anne. The Cornish chough is nearly as 

 extinct as the Cornish language. The principle of 

 a preserve for interesting wild animals, such as 

 would otherwise be extirpated, has been established 

 by the Americans, on an extensive scale, in the 



M 



