EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN 



There are countries with a less fertile soil and a 

 worse climate than ours, yet richer in bird life. 

 Nevertheless, England is not poor ; the species are 

 not few in number, and some are extremely abundant. 

 Unfortunately many of the finer kinds have been 

 too much sought after ; persecuted first for their 

 beauty, then for their rarity, until now we are 

 threatened with their total destruction. As these 

 kinds become unobtainable, those which stand next 

 in the order of beauty and rarity are persecuted in 

 their turn ; and in a country as densely populated 

 as ours, where birds cannot hide themselves from 

 human eyes, such persecutions must eventually 

 cause their extinction. Meanwhile the bird popu- 

 lation does not decrease. Every place in nature, like 

 every property in Chancery, has more than one 

 claimant to it — sometimes the claimants are many — 

 and so long as the dispute lasts all live out of the 



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