342 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
very frequently carrying a gun. I never slew a very rare though 
probably indigenous bird. It might be well, if it were possible, 
to extirpate such writers as the ‘Atheneum’ critic of Dr. Bull’s 
work, the advocates of the ceaseless pop-gun,—men destitute of 
any enthusiasm for living nature, whose eyes and thoughts do 
not travel beyond the four walls of a museum bird-room; men 
who publicly state that they will believe nothing until they see 
the bleeding form of a fresh-killed specimen; men, the polar 
antitheses (I trust Prof. Huxley may not see my adjective) of that 
great observer who, having killed a Crossbill partly by accident, 
—in, I think, the Shrewsbury Garden,—could not for years 
persuade his tongue to tell the sad story. No Wild Birds 
Protection Acts, none of the intelligence of those few landlords 
who strenuously preserve to the best of their ability all rare wild 
birds on their property, can, I fear, be a match for these anta- 
gonists of Nature. I fear that my words will do nothing to cure 
this evil. I believe, however, that what has twice happened will 
probably happen again. If it be true that all the evidence with 
respect to the occurrence of Picus martius in England previous 
to my own sight of this bird is unsatisfactory, then certainly 
what I saw is to me wonderful. But it is not so wonderful as it 
might appear to other people. Possibly not one man in a million 
residing in England can recognize the note of Picus martius (and 
had I not recognized this I should not in England have seen the 
bird). Selecting the men who would recognize the note, I am 
inclined to question whether one of them is likely to have 
possessed those habits and that mode of life which led me to 
recognize the bird. Still, we have to deal with generations, not 
living men; and the question of antecedent probabilities is 
complex, and scarcely calls for algebra here. 
One of your correspondents, whom I will treat as anonymous, 
refers to me as writing romance. Had his scientific reading 
been a little more extensive than it has been, he would not, 
perhaps, have used this term. As it is, he is one whose personal 
acquaintance I should much like to make, to whom I should like 
to show my birds’ eggs, with whom I should like to discuss (were 
it not for the waste of his valuable time) the notes, habits, and 
anatomy of every British bird. Now this writer, as a comparison, 
it seems, with my plain statements, tells some story of an 
acquaintance, who was not only romantically deceived and a 
