594 Digby Pigott : Wild Birds 



Section IV. 



ECONOMIC ORNITHOLOGY AND BIRD 

 PROTECTION. 



THE WILD BIRDS PROTECTION ACTS AS 



ADMINISTERED BY ORDERS IN GREAT 



BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



By Sir Digby Pigott, C.B. 



The protection of wild birds being- one of the subjects to 

 which the attention of the Congress is invited in the Agenda, 

 a short account of the statute law as it now stands in Great 

 Britain and Ireland, and the stages by which it has been 

 reached, with a few remarks on its application by statutory 

 Orders in different localities, may be of some interest, and 

 possibly of assistance to the members in considering, as I 

 hope they may be disposed to do, the possibility of some 

 improvement in the present law and practice. 



Since Professor Newton, to whom the gratitude of all 

 lovers of British birds is due, in his paper on the " Zoological 

 Aspects of the Game Laws,'' read before the British Asso- 

 ciation at its meeting at Norwich in 1868, awakened public 

 interest in the subject, few matters have been more dis- 

 cussed, both in and outside Parliament, than the importance 

 of doing something to protect oui* native wild birds. 



To say nothing of magazine articles — many of much 

 interest and value ; of endless correspondence in the news- 

 papers, and discussions by learned and other societies, the 

 question has been a subject of enquiry by two Select Com- 

 mittees of the House of Commons. No less than eleven 

 separate Acts have received the Royal Assent, and almost as 

 many Bills introduced in one or other House, and after more 

 or less debate withdrawn or dropped. 



As a result of the discussion on Professor Newton's paper 

 at the Norwich meeting, a Committee of the British Associa- 



