Protection of Wild Life in Yorkshire. 7 
or 
of the sea, the remainder of the flock will circle about them, 
showing evidences of great distress at the predicament of their 
fellows, thus offering the easiest of shots to the murderer. 
Many were also shot from the sands. I always considered 
this slaughter of Terns on the Yorkshire coast particularly 
abominable, for a little futher north a party of bird lovers 
among them, I am pleased to say, several members of the 
Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union, combine to protect all the birds 
nesting on the Farne Islands. Great numbers of Terns were 
reared there in security only to meet their doom as they move 
southwards on the Yorkshire coast. Most of the areas about 
our coast towns are now Closed to this class of work I am glad 
to say, and in the future I trust it will be impossible to witness 
such sights as the slaughter which occurred during an. extra- 
ordinary flight of Great Skuas along the Yorkshire coast line. 
The last destructive agent, and not the least, I shall mention, 
is the collector. 
I have much sympathy with a collector of birds’ eggs 1f he 
is a naturalist and content to take eggs in a strictly limited 
number for his own collection, and by his own efforts, at the 
same time studying the habits of the birds. Unfortunately it 
generally happens that when a man starts to form a collection, 
with this limitation, he speedily strays away from the course 
set and begins to desire series, taking every clutch which differs 
slightly from the ones he already has. Then he begins to 
take more ciutches to exchange with friends and correspondents 
for species he does not possess. After a time he finds that 
certain sets which he has had for some time are beginning to 
be a bit faded, so they must be replaced by fresh ones, and so 
on, until there is no end to his activities. 1 knew one collector 
in the north, who had an enormous collection, he imported 
large boxes full from Iceland and other places, using them to 
exchange with, and this man was not a naturalist ; he knew 
practically nothing about the birds and their habits. Quite 
a contrast was another who used to charter a steamer to go 
into the Arctic in the nesting season to find and take the eggs 
and study the birds himself. He told me once that he had 
about 12,000 eggs in his cabinets and they had cost him quite 
£1 per egg to obtain. 
Then we have another class of collector, that of bird skins. 
He comes to the Yorkshire coast or other parts on the north- 
east coast, often from London and other south country districts. 
He‘ blazes away ’ into flocks of small birds, killing and maiming 
dozens, in the ‘hope of picking up amongst them something 
rare, or, perhaps, a new sub-species. One, a well-known man 
collecting further north than Yorkshire (he has done more than 
his share here), asked some sportsmen staying in the same 
place, to shoot all the Marsh Tits they came across... The 
1916 Feb. ie 
