136 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



driven away, and so afflicted is this poor bird that she seems to 

 take very little notice of my presence, coming down, and remain- 

 ing on the water, quite near me. Naturally, I do not put myself 

 more in evidence than I need to do ; still, she cannot but see 

 me, and the fact of her permitting such an unusual proximity is 

 evidence of her distracted state of mind. 



Now, as it appears to me, it is not a creditable thing thus to 

 bring sorrow into the hearts of other beings, even when those 

 beings are not human ones, a distinction which, in the light of 

 evolution, has no real force or validity. To have made a being 

 suffer for our whim (thus breaking the golden rule) cannot in 

 itself, I suppose, be a subject of gratulation to any one. If 

 one wishes to go on doing so, he had better not watch birds 

 very closely — and especially not Swans ; though for my part, 

 I wish he would, since the result might possibly be a happy 

 one. The only plea which can be seriously urged in justi- 

 fication of these practices is, of course, the benefits which 

 they confer on science ; but will science kindly consider (I wish 

 she would, in time) which is likely to be of most benefit to her, 

 the possession of birds' eggs — even including the simulative 

 ones of the Cuckoo, the interest of which I am very far indeed 

 from denying— or ornithology as a whole, for the continued 

 existence of the last is getting more and more to depend upon 

 the speedy renouncement of the first. The end will not come 

 quite in our time, but is there not a moral obligation to think 

 a little of posterity ? — and has science no regard for morality ? 



(To be continued.) 



