152 PROTECTION OP BIRDS 



audience a practical exhibition of the difficulty, even the 

 impossibility, of identifying birds' eggs. 



I have in this box the egg of a Reeve, side by side 

 with the egg of a Redshant, and that of a Lapwing, and 

 the difference can hardly be discovered. If you protect 

 the Reeve you must extend the same favour to the 

 Redshank and Lapwing, and thus you interfere with the 

 Plover's egg trade. The idea of the Committee of the 

 British Association is to give local authorities power to 

 protect certain areas, in which you must prohibit the 

 taking of all eggs within certain dates. 



In the same year The Wild Birds' Protection Act, 

 1894, which was drafted by the Society for the Protection 

 of Birds, and introduced by Sir Herbert Maxwell, became 

 law, but it was still marred (in Newton's opinion) by the 

 attempt to protect by schedule of species, and he still 

 kept hammering away at trying to induce people to 

 accept the more practical means of reserved areas. 



I do not know whether you ever saw some " Notes " 

 that I wrote on Maxwell's first BiU (1893), 'but they were 

 reprinted at H. Brown's request in the Scott. Nat. for 

 last year. The argument I therein advanced is in my 

 belief as good now as ever, though (as you know) the 

 existing Act is a modification of what Maxwell originally 

 intended, but the mischief (as I conceive) of trying to 

 protect the eggs of species by name stiU remains as an 

 alternative. The more I consider the subject the more 

 certain I am that the priinciple of " area protection " is 

 the only one that is practicable, and I much wish your 

 sandhills, the neighbourhood of Hickling, and I daresay 

 two or three other places in Norfolk, could be placed 

 under the Act. But great judgment will be required to 

 define the limits of each " protected area " as well as the 

 close-time, whether it is to begin on the 15th April, 1st 

 or 15th May, 1st of June, and so on. These are points 

 on which local knowledge is everything, and most likely 



