4



II. I. Pococlc — The Proposed Neiv Bill for



certain districts in Scotland, where it is sufficiently numerous to prove

a pest. Conversely, the local authority can apply to the central

authority for the addition of a particular species to either of the

schedules, if it is considered to be in need of protection in a particular

district; and the central authority would be guided in its decision by

the advice of the advisory committee of experts.


Even if space permitted a detailed enumeration of the species,

with the reasons for their recommendation for protection, such an

undertaking would be quite unnecessary in a journal owned and read

almost exclusively by ornithologists and bird-lovers. Possibly, how¬

ever, the love of birds, which lies at the root of aviculture, may induce

some of the members of this Society to wish that the lists of protected

species had been longer. Two things, however, must be remembered ;

first, the Departmental Committee would not be likely to err on the

side of neglecting species that required protection ; and, secondly,

there were so many interests to be considered that all feelings due to

sentiment or to a taste for natural history had probably to be sacrificed

in many cases to purely economical and utilitarian demands. Few of

our birds, for instance, appeal more strongly to us on account of their

beauty, elegance, and vitality than the Tits ; but, setting aside the

Bearded Tit or Reedling, which is not a Titmouse at all, despite its

name, the only one that appears in the schedules is the Crested Tit,

which is exceedingly rare. The reason for their omission is, no doubt,

partly that these highly organized little birds are sufficiently numerous

to be exempted from protection — and it was desirable to keep the lists

as short as possible—but more particularly that the evidence against

some of them, especially the Blue Tit and in a lesser degree the Great

Tit, on the charge of serious pecuniary loss inflicted on fruit-growers

is so overwhelming and so completely outweighs the evidence of the

benefit conferred by their insectivorous habits, that the proposal to

protect them would have provoked a storm of protest from owners of

orchards. And the same thing would have happened for precisely

similar reasons if recommendation had been made to extend the

guardianship of the law over that handsome finch of ours, the Bull¬

finch. If birds of this kind were protected it is tolerably certain that

the law would be set at defiance by fruit-growers, because it would pay



