168 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Our real efforts should be directed against ourselves — that is 

 to say, against the inordinate love of one thing in us at the 

 expense of another. It ought, for instance, to be for all as it is 

 for many, a greater loss never to see such birds as Kites, Buz- 

 zards, Peregrine Falcons, Ospreys, Eagles, Eavens, &c., than it 

 is a gain to have a larger number of Pheasants, Partridges, 

 Grouse, or Blackcock to the end of killing more of them ; 

 and it ought to be an infinitely greater pleasure not only to 

 see a bird or other animal in life and nature, but even to 

 know that it is so, than to hold it dead in our own poor pos- 

 session. That this is largely not the case shows lack of taste, 

 lack of imagination, lack of a true love of nature. Let us supply 

 these wants in our proper selves, and "keep down" those 

 redundancies which prey upon them, and the cruel extermination 

 — now in active process — of so many beautiful and interesting 

 forms of life will cease. By preserving our own " balance " — the 

 proper proportion of our tastes and pleasures — we should be pre- 

 serving that of nature. What, for instance, would not a proper 

 balance of appreciation in women as between their own beauty 

 and that of birds effect in favour of the latter ? 



Extermination is a real evil. The desire to check it is not 

 mere sentimentality, as some writers seem to imagine. " Why," 

 for instance, asks Sir Herbert Maxwell* (and he intends the 

 question as a reduetio ad ahsurdum), '* should not insects, which 

 are preyed upon by birds, be as much protected as the birds ? " 

 Certainly, if it would be ridiculous to save some most beautiful 

 butterfly from disappearance at the hands of man, it would be 

 equally so to save a Humming-Bird or Bird of Paradise ; but, as 

 Touchstone says, " much virtue in your if." It is marvellous 

 how men, who would be in despair (yet not more so than myself) 

 at the threatened destruction of some fine painting or piece of 

 sculpture, can see with imperturbability the artificial extermina- 

 tion of a living work. I admit that, when we look at, say, the . 

 Laocoon, the Assumption, or a portrait by Rembrandt, it is 

 difl&cult to bear in mind the relative proportions of human and 

 divine genius, but reason should tell us how immeasurably 

 superior are the works of nature to those of art. If we must love 

 killing, yet let us not, even as pure egotists, tolerate making to 



■■'■ I am quoting not the letter, but the spirit, and this from memory. 

 If I misrepresent, therefore, I must apologise. 



