SEA FOWL. 229 



not in any great fear of their speedy extermination. What, 

 however, the Rev. F. 0. Morris, and others equally perspicuous 

 and kindly hearted, seek to do is to rouse and maintain a 

 lively sympathy with our wonderfully rich and varied shore 

 and inland fauna. They would forbid the cockney fusillades 

 which sweep the English cliffs of their tenants while the young 

 are still callow and dependent ; nip in the bud, if I understand 

 them aright, puerile and abortive superstitions regarding the 

 misarraiigement of Nature, and frown down (perhaps the 

 hardest task of all) the shop-girl fancy for ill-gotten plumes 

 wantonly pillaged for a purpose they do not effect. These 

 humanitarians, however, are no sentimentalists, or they would 

 forfeit the support of the keen British relish for outdoor 

 sports which vivifies and supplies the backbone of their cause. 

 They recognize there is a difference between the barbaric 

 carnage which loads the stem and stern of a boat with the 

 shattered and soiled bodies of seamew and tern, of which 

 little or nothing can be made, and reasonable and legitimate 

 sport when the breeding season is over. It must not be for- 

 gotten that grouse moors and partridge manors are little less 

 accessible to the majority of our countrymen than the golden 

 fruit of the Hesperides. They turn naturally to the foreshore, 

 that border country between riparian avarice on the one hand 

 and the ocean on the other, and here it is only natural they 

 should find some freedom. I myself have spent many happy 

 days on the shingle and under the white face of the towering 

 cliffs, matching my skill in stalking against the superabundant 

 watchfulness of the curlews, or attempting to approach red- 

 shank and plover in wilderness of shingle and yellow sea 

 poppies. To attempt the suppression of these proclivities in 

 our race by Act of Parliament, would be as senseless as was 

 the project of the emperor who sought to cure his subjects 

 of avarice by coining money of preposterous weight and 

 steeping it on the threshold of the royal mint in evil-smelling 

 fluids. 



But every true sportsman detests remorselessness, and 



