II 



EAGLE AND FALCON 



I PRESERVE the golden eagle, but 

 shoot the peregrine." So, on 3Oth April, 

 1893, wrote the late Duke of Argyll, 

 concerning the two noblest forms of 

 winged life. From an enlightened proprietor, a 

 humane man, and one profoundly interested in 

 wild creatures, this represented rather more than 

 the sentiment of the time. The average position 

 is tersely put in the words of another corre- 

 spondent. " We are better off without the one 

 and I do not see that the other is of any use." 

 There were those, not enlightened nor humane, 

 who cared for neither falcon nor eagle perhaps, 

 could scarcely distinguish one from the other and 

 shot both. 



Intelligence selects ; ignorance kills. Self-in- 

 terest rules throughout, with a milder or ruder 

 sway, hindering the action of an awakening 

 aesthetic sense even in the most tolerant. Some 

 have an eye a little more discriminating than that 

 of a gamekeeper, which is no more than might 

 reasonably be expected. Many have not. In 



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