COS JJigln/ Pigott. 



When one reads the distill étions drawn in most counties 

 between indistinguishable eggs, it is difficult to believe that, 

 whatever may be the case with illiterate offenders, any one 

 capable of pleading his oavii cause or able to employ a lawyer 

 to defend him could be convicted. 



It is the commonest thing in a county now to find, for 

 instance, two or three Warblers scheduled, while others, not 

 more common, or Chiffchaffs, all building much the same 

 nests and laying eggs in size and general appearance almost 

 identical, are unscheduled. 



In Carmarthenshire the Blue Tit is scheduled, the Coal Tit 

 unscheduled. In Derbyshire the case is reversed : the Blue 

 Tits' eggs being unprotected, the Coal Tits' protected. In 

 Cheshire the Common Tern is scheduled, but not the Arctic. 

 The same invisible arbitrary lines separating the legal from 

 the illegal runs through most of the English Orders. 



I hope I may be pardoned for venturing, in conclusion, 

 again to invite attention to another possible method of 

 protecting birds' eggs already more than once advocated in 

 "The Times " and elsewhere. It has at least the merit of 

 simplicity and has received, in an article in "Blackwood's 

 Magazine " with very slight reservation, the support of Sir 

 Herbert Maxwell, and in "The Times" the unqualified 

 approval of an even higher authority, the late Lord Lilford. 



It is that the principle recognised by the Act of 1880, that 

 owners and occupiers have a legitimate interest in the wild 

 birds found on their lands, should be carried a little further 

 and eggs made the property of those on whose land they may 

 be laid, and that it should be left to them to allow birds-nesting 

 or not as they may judge right. 



The objection that many of the birds most needing protec- 

 tion often nest on spots which have no private owner would 

 be sufficiently met by a provision in the new Act vesting fore- 

 shores and other places of doubtful ownership for the 

 purposes of the Act in County Councils or other local authority. 



If a simple Act were passed to this effect, placing wild 

 birds' eggs on the same footing as gooseberries and apples, 

 there should be no very great difficulty in securing all reason- 

 able protection for rare birds' nests. 



