JANUAKY 31 



from their likeness to stoats, and, indeed, they are not 

 to be trusted with young leverets. But their chief diet 

 consists of mice, rats, and young rabbits. The intelli- 

 gent interest in wild things which the pursuit of game 

 wakens in so many minds may be trusted to make the 

 regulations of game-preserving more discriminating in 

 the future than it has been in the past. The harmless 

 nigh tr jar will no longer pay the penalty of his hawk- 

 like mien, for it is well understood what useful work he 

 does in keeping down moths and cockchafers. Men are 

 beginning to take delight in encouraging and studying, 

 rather than slaying, some of our visitors which have 

 become rare the bittern, the ruff and reeve, and some 

 of the scarcer waterfowl ; and we look chiefly to sports- 

 men to set the fashion. It still is too much the way 

 for one who has shot a strange and beautiful animal to 

 record it boastfully in the local press. The collector 

 is busy at his nefarious trade, and every noodle who 

 wants to pose as an ornithologist writes to the local 

 press to report his senseless outrages on feathered 

 visitors. News comes (1898) of the slaughter of wax- 

 wings (Ampelis garrulus), from Banff (two), Elgin 

 (one), and Cairngorm (two): evidently a small party, 

 just landed in the inhospitable north-east, has received 

 the usual 'Highland welcome.' It is in the power of 

 sportsmen to discourage this kind of thing, and people 

 will soon learn to be ashamed of such treatment of 

 wanderers if the right example is set them. 



