THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 45 



Lord Grey's Bird Bill 



IN the House of Lords yesterday the Committee stage of Viscount 

 Grey's Bill for the protection of wild birds was completed. 

 Though the Bill has been subjected to minor criticism and amend- 

 ment, with the prospect of more alterations in the Report stage, little 

 evidence was forthcoming in yesterday's debate to bear out Lord Craw- 

 ford's contention on second reading that the Bill goes beyond the 

 warrant of public sentiment. The Bill is intended to consolidate the 

 contused state of the law about wild birds and to make it easier to ad- 

 minister. Discussion yesterday fastened, as might be expected, on the 

 treatment of one or two species of birds which are often regarded as nox- 

 ious and therefore not deserving of human protection. The Bill makes 

 no mention of noxious birds as such, but it appears to leave sufficient 

 means open to prevent any species from becoming a local plague. 



Of the rarer British birds the Bill recognizes two categories — those 

 which, with their nests and eggs, are to be protected at all times, and 

 those which, with their eggs and nests, are to be protected only in a de- 

 fined closed season. Towards the rights of both kinds of birds the public 

 conscience has been for years growing more sensitive. The man who 

 kills a rare bird simply because it is a rarity is now universally repro- 

 bated — humane opinion usually has no word bad enough for him; but 

 rare birds have other enemies, none the less dangerous because they mas- 

 querade as servants of science. In the name of oology, which is, after 

 all, only Greek for egg-collecting, a good many crimes are committed. 

 A bird, frequent enough elsewhere, may be scarce and breed little in 

 these islands; oologists, however, are often not content with a specimen 

 of the egg, but insist that it shall be a home-laid egg — one, or several, 

 perhaps, of only a few clutches laid in Great Britain. If the Bill dis- 

 courages this particular form of egg-collecting, science will not suffer. 

 In any case, there may justly be occasions where the interests of classi- 

 ficatory science ought to give way to those of life, the ornithologist's 

 to the bird-lover's. It is as the lover of birds, their host and their en- 

 tertainer, that Lord Grey appeals, as he has appealed before in public 

 addresses and lectures, in this Bill, and there are many who would rather 

 be assured, on hearsay alone, that such and such bird still breeds on our 

 hills and shores than see a stuffed specimen, the last perhaps ever caught 

 in England, through a glass in a museum. The future of many of the 

 noble fauna of the earth, the irreplaceable products of aeons of evolution, 

 is bound to be doubtful as mankind advances upon their strongholds; 

 the great cats, on account of their habits and conditions of life, may have 

 but a few years before them and if they become extinct the blame will 

 not wholly rest at man's door. But it is otherwise with the race of birds. 



