CH. V.] PLEA FOR RARE BIRDS. 209 
that these interesting visitors were in the act of 
constructing a nest when they fell before Mr 
Snooks’s unerring tube.” 
It was not very long ago that I saw in The 
Times a letter from a “naturalist,” relating how 
a Harlequin-duck had visited his pond, and be- . 
come quite domesticated there, swimming about 
with his other ducks, and coming tamely to be 
fed with them day after day. Of course this could 
not be permitted: the poor Harlequin-duck was 
much too rare to be allowed the common rites of 
hospitality, so he was “secured,” and the perpe- 
trator of the deed, apparently thinking he had 
done a fine thing, actually wrote to The Times, 
informing the civilised people of England of his 
achievement, and evidently expecting to be be- 
lauded on the strength of it. Another so-called 
“naturalist’”’ similarly boasted through the me- 
dium of a newspaper, that he had been so fortu- 
nate as to “secure” (that seems the correct term) 
a Nightingale, in the West of Devonshire, having 
shot it whilst in the act of singing on the topmost 
branch of a thorn-bush. Another instance of the 
same kind has come within my own knowledge, | 
where a person having been unsuccessful in his 
attempts to approach a Stone Curlew, whose nest 
P 
