Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, and Articles. 



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Chough, the Honey Buzzard, and numbers of other species? nobody but the 

 collector whose moral right to destroy auy species at his own pleasure is 

 practically affirmed by Mr. Morres. No one will deny the great educational 

 value of collecting, and no one who has the collector's instinct in him will do 

 other than sympathise with Mr. Morres' description of the intense pleasure 

 which the acquisition of a rare specimen gives. But there are other and 

 higher interests than those of the individual collector. Our Archaeological 

 Societies have been founded to encourage not the destruction, but the 

 preservation of objects of antiquity. Surely Natural History Societies in 

 like manner, should encourage not the destruction but the 'preservation 

 of the rarer species, not merely of birds only, but of butterflies and 

 flowers as well. What is the difference between the collector — be he young 

 or old — who to enrich his own collection, goes an appreciable way towards 

 the extermination of a scarce species, and the British or American tourist, 

 who picks out the mosaics of the Baptistery of Ravenna, or the marble pave- 

 ment of the Palace of the Caesars, to enrich his collection of " mementos " of 

 his foreign travel. Both are helping to destroy — what once destroyed can 

 never be replaced again — and should be restrained from doing so by public 

 opinion, which after all is almost as strong a force as law, if it can only be 

 brought to bear. Surely too, the argument that no harm is done by shooting 

 rare migrants, because in any case they would not stop to breed with us 

 is an extremely weak one. They would breed elsewhere, and if thc} r are 

 left alone they will come back again next year, as a single hooded crow did 

 regularly for four winters following some years ago to the home of the 

 present writer, where no ODe had ever seen his like before. 



History of the Wilts and East Somerset Congre- 

 gational Union, for the Century after its com- 

 mencement, 1797—1897, with some Detailed 

 Account of the Churches connected therewith. 

 By S. B. Stribling . . . C. Gillman, Jun., 

 Printer, Devizes. 8vo. 1897. Price m. pp. 65. 



This painstaking pamphlet commences with a review of the social and 

 religious condition of England in 1797, and of the formation of the Wilts 

 and East Somerset Association in that year. It then deals with the history 

 of the principal Nonconformist Chapels in the county one by one — beginning, 

 of course, with " the oldest Free Church " in England, that at Horningsham, 

 which was built in the year 1566 for the Scotch workmen employed in I be 

 erection of Longleat. The Congregational bodies of Salisbury, Wostbury, 

 and Malmesbury date from the Act of Uniformity in 1662. A slight sketch 

 of the history of each of these, and of their ministers, is given. Next come 

 those of Marlborough and Cofsham 1666, Avebury 1670, Birdbush 1670, 

 Trowbridge 1700 and 1771, Warminster 1719, Tisbury 1726, Bradford-on- 

 Avon 1740, Castle Combe 1743, Chippenham 1770. Melksham 1773, 1 

 1780, Highworth 1788, Mere 1795, Holt 1800, Market Lavington 1801, 

 Swindon. Bulford, Codford, Hindon, Heytesbury. Sutton Veney, Shei 



