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BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



flower life of their country surroundings that they 

 will not readily forsake them for all the temptations 

 that the city offers. 



" I know a young man in my own county who 

 had made up his mind to go to town or to emigrate 

 that he might make a fortune. He was fond of 

 reading and became interested in one of Ruskin's 

 writings, with this result, that he gave up all 

 thought of leaving the quiet countryside for the 

 city or for America, and told me that what with 

 the bird and the flower life and beauty of his native 

 vale, to which until then he had been blind, he had 

 determined to be content to stay at home a poorer 

 man, for he had found great riches. 



"Not the least beneficent work the Society has 

 done is in the direction of aiding and abetting 

 legislation. . . . But it is not on Acts of Parliament 

 that the Society depends for the sure protection of 

 the great British possession and heritage we have 

 received of bird life and bird beauty and bird song. 

 It is to an enlightened public opinion, to a deeper 

 interest in the ways and habits of those friends 

 and companions of our workaday life, that it looks 

 for the success of its national mission." 



NOTES. 

 Mr. G. F. Watts, R.A. 



In 1837, the year of Queen Victoria's accession, 

 Mr. G. F. Watts, then a young man of twenty, 

 exhibited his first picture in the Royal Academy, 

 the pathetic bird study, " The Wounded Heron." 

 In 1899, two years after the Diamond Jubilee, the 

 veteran artist of eighty-two sent to the New 

 Gallery his well-known picture of The Shuddering 

 Angel weeping over an altar covered with birds 

 and birds' plumage, which he dedicated to " All 

 who love the beautiful and mourn over the sense- 

 less and cruel destruction of bird life and beauty." 

 Throughout his long life the sympathies of the 

 greatest and noblest artist of our times were ever 

 with the cause of humanity, and his protest lifted, 

 whether by the pen or with the still greater power 

 of art, against the cruel, the senseless, and the 

 ignoble. A member of the Society for the Protec- 

 tion of Birds, he willingly granted the Society per- 

 mission to reproduce his "Angel" to enforce the 

 text of its appeal against " The Trade in Birds' 

 Feathers" ; and on the removal of the picture from 

 his studio in London to the gallery at Compton, he 

 consented to the distribution of the pamphlet to 

 visitors, "in the hope," wrote Mrs. Watts, "that it 

 may forward your good work which Mr. Watts and 



I have so much at heart." He was ill when this 

 letter was written, and little more than a fortnight 

 later (July 1st) was called to face the Angel of 

 Death, whom his fine imagination had always 

 depicted as at once so majestic and so pitiful. 



Elizabeth, Duchess of Wellington. 



The Society has also lost a powerful friend by the 

 death of Elizabeth, Duchess of Wellington, who 

 joined it in its earliest days, and was one of the 

 first of its Vice-Presidents. The Duchess's feeling 

 for animal suffering was wide and practical, and 

 was evidenced not only by her personal interest 

 in the work of this Society, but also by her long 

 connection with the Tunbridge Wells Society for 

 the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, of which 

 she consented to become Vice-President when 

 Mrs. Edward Phillips became its Hon. Secretary. 

 Her remarkable beauty of face and form (Queen 

 Victoria is said to have considered her the most 

 beautiful woman of the Court), the stately carriage 

 of her head, on which she never wore an aigrette ; 

 her long public life as Lady of the Bedchamber 

 from 1843 to 1858, and as Mistress of the Robes 

 from 1 86 1 to 1869, and from 1874 to 1880 ; and the 

 extreme pride and affection of the Great Duke for 

 his daughter-in-law— the child of his old friend 

 the Marquess of Tweeddale ; these and many 

 other things made her a personage ; and like the 

 great artist whose death is recorded above, she had 

 attained to more than four score years. (Born in 

 1820 ; died August, 1904.) 



School Leagues in France and Switzerland. 



Work in connection with schools is regarded as 

 the most hopeful sign of progress in France, 

 School Leagues for the protection of birds existing 

 all over the country, to the number of 5000. A 

 similar movement (writes a Geneva correspondent) 

 has been set on foot in Switzerland by the forma- 

 tion in the Canton of Geneva of a league for the 

 protection of animals and plants, the members of 

 which promise to take no eggs or nests, and to do 

 their utmost to prevent the capture or destruction 

 of birds and the use of bird-lime, traps, and nets. 

 The handbook issued by the Society for the use of 

 its members, compiled by M. Cointre, a French 

 schoolmaster, bases its appeal almost entirely on 

 utilitarian grounds, giving lists of the animals, 

 birds, and insects most useful, and also of those 

 considered injurious to agriculture. 



