for Love of Science.



227



though I know that presently they will reward me by rooting up

plants, scattering manure over my paths, and later on digging holes

in my apples and eating my cherries.


Well, so much for birds-nesting, which has been made a

punishable offence through the efforts of the Wild Bird Protectionists:

next we come to the hand-rearing of our native birds which has

also been denounced as cruel. Our present Editor, Mr. Astley, has

ably written on the delightful companionship afforded by a hand-

reared Wheatear, and my household, as well as many friends,

experienced the greatest pleasure some years ago in watching,

talking to, and playing games with a hand-reared Pied Wagtail.

Nobody, unless he had spent an hour or two in the company of that

bird, would have credited for a moment the extraordinary intelligence

which it displayed, the zest with which it entered into a game of

touch or hide and seek. The bird was infinitely happier and lived a

much fuller life than it could have done in freedom ; moreover I

rescued it from what would have been almost certain death, a

marauding cat having already devoured its brothers and sisters when

I came upon it shivering against a fence after it had sprung from the

nest. The present law would prosecute anybody who, through pity,

adopted one of these poor victims to the modern tendency to keep

four-footed pests, and made it a child of the home; thus it gives the

cat a right to rend and maim a creature infinitely more beautiful,

more intelligent and more lovable than itself, and excuses the

brutality of its action on the ground of its being a cat’s nature to

delight in destroying life; so the man who would make a friend of

the helpless creature and render its life a continuous joy, is deemed

worthy of punishment.


Does the so-called Bird-protectionist really believe that in

interfering with man’s undoubted right to claim dominion over the

fowls of the air, he is doing the birds themselves any good at all; or

is his action dictated solely by a love for notoriety, for a malicious

pleasure in meddling with concerns respecting which he is not only

profoundly ignorant, but concerning which he does not desire even

to know the actual truth ? I am afraid, from the constant repeti¬

tion in his pamphlets of statements which have long been proved

unsound, that there can be only one answer to this.



