BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 65 



always worth killing; that is to say, it will come 

 — the scramble for the wryneck's carcass — if 

 nothing is done in the meantime to restrain the 

 enthusiasm of those who value a bird only when 

 the spirit of life that gave it flight and grace and 

 beauty has been crushed out of it — when it is 

 no longer a bird. The cause of its decline up 

 till now cannot be known to us; we can only say 

 in our ignorance that this type, like innumerable 

 others that have ceased to exist, has probably 

 run its course and is dying out. Or it might be 

 imagined that its system is undergoing some slow 

 change, which tells on the migratory instinct, that 

 it is becoming more a resident species in its winter 

 home in Africa. But all conjectures are idle in 

 such a case. It is melancholy, at all events for 

 the ornithologist, to think of an England without 

 a wryneck; but before that still distant day ar- 

 rives let us hope that the love of birds will have 

 become a common feeling in the mass of the 

 population, and that the variety of our bird life 

 will have been increased by the addition of some 

 chance colonists and of many new species intro- 

 duced from distant regions. 



