NOTES AND QUERIES. 229 



Meadow-Pipits, and even Grouse to be caught in them ; and these unfor- 

 tunate birds are often left for hours, sometinaes for days, hanging in lingering 

 misery with a broken limb, till either death from exhaustion, or a ijnock on 

 the head from a belated keeper on his weekly rounds, at last puts an end 

 to their suflferings. To my mind the best mode of opening the eyes of the 

 public to the wanton and senseless destruction of birds, is by getting the 

 children in the various schools interested in them, and taking them out at 

 least on one afternoon during the summer months, and explaining to them 

 the various birds, mammals, reptiles, insects, flowers, &c., that are to be 

 met with in such a ramble ; also by the giving of lectures by practical 

 people, who know what they are talking about, to the landowners, game- 

 keepers, collectors, gardeners, &c. A vast amount of nonsense is unfor- 

 tunately both talked and written upon the subject by the ignorant, and 

 then far more harm than good is unwittingly wrought. Some few are, I 

 believe, beyond reclamation. 



Much may be done by private enterprise, and here in Yorkshire several 

 of us, who are much interested in preserving from extinction some of our 

 rarer breeding species, have employed a watcher with marked success. 

 Many landowners and game-preservers only need to have the usefulness of 

 certain birds pointed out to them, by those who know what they are talking 

 about, to give immediate orders for their protection ; and children can be 

 easily trained to take an interest in these things, and not destroy them. I 

 would be the last to advocate Draconian methods, as in these days by so 

 doing we should defeat the very object that we desire to attain, and many 

 a well-known naturalist has been induced to take up some special study, 

 through the pleasure derived from a day's bird's-nesting in his boyhood. 

 Nor would I ever try to hinder the perfectly legitimate shooting of birds in 

 moderation during the proper season ; but while I yield to no one in my 

 love of sport — in pursuit of which I have sat for hours in a hole dug out on 

 the mud flats, waiting for wildfowl to drift in with the tide or pass over at 

 flight-time, with the thermometer standing at many degrees below freezing 

 point; have worked a single-handed punt on the flood water till my hands 

 were so numb with ice and frost that when I got up to the Ducks I could 

 hardly pull the trigger of the big gun ; and have been out at sea all day 

 in a small yacht in a driving snow-storm, on the mere chance of a shot — 

 yet I can safely say that I have never killed for killing's sake. The birds 

 I have shot were mostly waifs and strays, here to-day and gone to-morrow ; 

 and it gives me far greater pleasure and interest to lay aside the gun and 

 rifle, and take up the field-glass and watch the birds at home in their 

 natural haunts and surroundings. I would far sooner do this than destroy 

 and preserve for my collection any of the rare and beautiful birds that would 

 remain and breed with us, if only their arch-enemy, the man with the gun, 



