228 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



extent, like Naaman the Syrian, I have been compelled to bow myself down 

 in the House of Rimmon. Ladies have much to answer for as regards the 

 slaughter of birds. At a certain village on the coast a large trade is still 

 done in shooting the beautiful Terns or Sea-Swallows, and the Kittiwakes, 

 for millinery purposes. Seven boats used to be employed ; now, I am glad 

 to say, there are but two. Thanks to the afore-mentioned extension of the 

 close-time, most of the Terns are gone, and the pretty tame little Kitti- 

 wakes provide the greatest number of victims. During the third week in 

 October, 1899, 120 were shot in one day, 96 on another, and 60 on the 

 morning of October 30th. Some 360 were shot during the week. A man 

 from London was occupied in skinning the birds, which at this season will 

 keep for about a week. Some 260 birds were hanging up on October 30th, 

 waiting to be skinned. When this operation is over the birds are packed 

 up and forwarded to London. Sixpence apiece is the price paid. Now, I 

 do not blame the men who obtain these birds — they are hard-working, 

 honest fellows, not overburdened with this world's goods — nearly as much 

 as I blame those who employ them, or those who reap the fruit of their 

 labours. Quifacit per alium,facit per se. The men pursue a perfectly 

 legitimate calling, when everyone is free to shoot what they will ; but this 

 wholesale destruction of beautiful birds is very grevious, all the more so 

 when one considers that it is perpetrated for the adorning of ladies' hats 

 and bonnets ; and I feel sure that if only those ladies who love to adorn 

 themselves with birds' feathers, wings, and bodies knew half the abominable 

 cruelty that is perpetrated, in various parts of the world, at the shrine of 

 the Goddess of Fashion, — feathers plucked out of the living bird, wings 

 torn off while they are yet alive, and the mangled remains thrown back 

 on the salt-water to linger in agony, till death comes as a merciful relief 

 to their sufferings, — they would for ever forswear ornaments purchased 

 at the price of such terrible suffering. With regard to the senseless de- 

 struction of those most useful birds. Owls and Kestrels, I am very glad to 

 say that a far more enlightened view obtains at the present day, both with 

 game-preservers and with game-keepers, and it is comparatively seldom 

 that one comes across their mangled remains hanging up in the keeper's 

 " museums." That most excellent and practical ornithologist and lover of 

 birds, the late Lord Lilford, used to say that the man who would shoot an 

 Owl was only fit for a lunatic asylum, and the sheltering aegis of many 

 a landowner is now extended to them. One thing I should like to see 

 entirely abolished by Act of Parliament, and that is that most iniquitous 

 institution known as the " pole-trap." I regard it as a veritable invention 

 of the Evil One, and I make no excuse for having buried dozens of them. 

 They not only catch the various species of Hawks and Owls for which they 

 are set, but I have known Cuckoos, Nightjars, Wheatears, Ring-Ouzels, 



