xvi 



PREFACE. 



protected by law in the Bill of 1880, which subsequently 

 passed into an Act, especially as he was put to no little 

 personal inconvenience by attending the House of Lords 

 at that particular time. With him the protection then 

 first accorded to Owls, a fact overlooked by many recent 

 writers or speakers on the subject, was no question of 

 sentiment only. He knew, and no one better, how 

 beneficial Owls are to the farmer and the game- 

 preserver — though the latter will hardly ever admit it. 



The course of life hitherto led had been only inter- 

 rupted occasionally by the malady to which he was 

 subject, but it was rudely broken in the autumn of 1882, 

 by the death, after a short illness, of his eldest son, who 

 had but recently attained his majority. This loss was 

 greatly taken to heart, and was followed within little 

 more than a year by a still heavier blow in the death of 

 Lady Lilford — a loss more felt now that he himself was 

 becoming a permanent invalid, some three or four acute 

 attacks of his insidious disease having begun to cripple 

 his hands and feet. In all this time and under all these 

 afflictions neither his kindliness nor his cheerfulness 

 forsook him. Both his letters and his conversation, 

 tinged as they were with grief, evinced his natural wit 

 and humour, brought perhaps into greater prominence 

 than before by their contrast with words, occasionally 

 let drop, that shewed how deeply his feelings had been 

 stirred. Yet there was no forced pleasantry, for a 

 man more free from affectation can scarcely have lived. 

 The real consolation was found when some time after 



