BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 107 



public opinion is unfavourable to it the guardians 

 of the law themselves, the police and the magis- 

 trates, are found encouraging the people to break 

 the law. Again, we find that where commons are 

 enclosed, and the law says nothing, the people are 

 accustomed to assemble together unlawfully to tear 

 the fences down, and are not punished. For, after 

 all, if laws do not express or square with public 

 will or opinion, they have httle force ; and if, in 

 any locality, the people thought proper to do so — 

 if they were not restrained by that dull tame spirit 

 I have spoken of — ^they would, lawfully or unlaw- 

 fully, protect their sea-fowl from the cockney 

 sportsmen, and sweep the bird-catchers out of their 

 lanes and waste lands. 



One day I paid a visit to Maidenhead, a pleasant 

 town on the Thames, where the Thames is most 

 beautiful, set in the midst of a rich and diversified 

 country which should be a birds' paradise. In my 

 walks in the town I saw a great many stuffed king- 

 fishers, and, in the shops of the local taxidermists, 

 some rare and beautiful birds, with others that are 

 fast becoming rare. But outside of the town I saw 

 no kingfishers and no rare species at all, and com- 

 paratively few birds of any kind. It might have been 

 a town of Philistine cockneys who at no very distant 

 period had emigrated thither from the parish of 



