NOTES AND QUERIES 227 



and willing to pay all his expenses, with a substantial margin for himself 

 to boot? Is this likely to prove any deterrent? I would have every bird 

 that was not proved to be distinctly injurious to agricultural or horticultural 

 produce properly protected for a certain season by a proper law, properly 

 enforced ; and should any bond fide collectors desire eggs or specimens of 

 any particular species, they should, on payment of a fixed fee, receive a 

 proper permit to acquire the same. When the true history of the gradual 

 extermination of many of our rare and interesting birds comes to be written, 

 a very heavy indictment will have to be laid at the door of the egg-robber, 

 who takes every clutch that he can come across, if perchance one should 

 differ slightly from the rest. Drainage and reclamation of the bird's favourite 

 haunts, and the increase and spread of an ever-growing population, are 

 very important factors in the case, but the trail of the egg-collector is over 

 them all ; and the worst of it is that many collectors pose as naturalists 

 with their right hand, and with their left employ men, honest enough 

 fellows as a rule, but in these hard times glad enough to earn an additional 

 penny, to collect for them every clutch of the eggs of some particular bird 

 that they can come across. Such a collector can only be compared to his 

 ornithological prototype, that arch-robber the Carrion Crow. Birds which 

 are rare in one particular place are generally pretty common in some other 

 locality; and it has always been a mystery to me why such ridiculously 

 high prices should be offered by collectors for certain British taken eggs, 

 when these are common enough upon the Continent. The eggs of certain 

 birds have acquired an altogether fictitious value, and as a consequence are 

 practically farmed by certain people to whom their nesting haunts are 

 known. Here in Yorkshire a great amount of good has been done by the 

 extension of the close-season, so that now most of the vast concourse of sea- 

 fowl that breed in the cliffs, in certain places, get off their young in safety ; 

 but before that happy event, as I have mentioned elsewhere, cruelty, which 

 I can only characterize as damnable, used to be practised. So-called 

 sportsmen used to go out, on the opening day, with the avowed intention 

 of firing away so many cartridges ; they never even troubled to pick 

 up one quarter of what they shot ; and I have witnessed the pitiable 

 sight of a wounded Guillemot, with broken wing and its wounds exposed 

 to the salt sea-water, trying to clamber up the cliff with a fish in its bill, 

 to its starving young one, many of which perished through the death or 

 maiming of their parents. 



Conversant as I am with almost every phase of Yorkshire bird-life, I 

 have often procured immunity for certain species by the judicious dis- 

 tribution of a little of the current coin of the realm ; but at the same time 

 I have at times been obliged to witness scenes of which I thoroughly dis- 

 approved, but which I was powerless to prevent ; and so, to a certain 



