258 BIRDS AND MAN 



and I have also been told in very plain words 

 that I could have any eggs I wanted. 



It is hardly necessary to say here that the 

 proposed alteration in the law to make it 

 protective of all species will, so far as the 

 private collector is concerned, leave matters just 

 as they are. 



There is reaUy only one way out of the 

 difficulty, — one remedy for an evil which grows 

 in spite of penalties and of pubhc opinion, — 

 namely, a law to forbid the making of collections 

 of British birds by private persons. If all that 

 has been done in and out of Parliament since 

 1868 to preserve our wild birds — not merely the 

 common abundant species, which are not re- 

 garded by collectors, but all species — is not to 

 be so much labour wasted, such a law must 

 sooner or later be made. It will not be denied 

 by any private collector, whether he clings to 

 the old delusion that it is to the advantage ot 

 science that he should have cabinets fuU of 

 "British killed" specimens or not, — it wiU not 

 be denied that the drain on our wild bird life 

 caused by collecting is a constantly increasing 

 one, and that no fresh legislation on the lines 



