EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN. 
There are countries with a less fertile soil and a 
worse climate than ours, yet richer in bird life. 
Nevertheless, England is not poor; the species 
are not few in number, and some are extremely 
abundant. Unfortunately many of the finer kinds 
have been too much sought after ; persecuted first 
for their beauty, then for their rarity, until now 
we are threatened with their total destruction. As 
these kinds become unobtainable, those which stand 
next in the order of beauty and rarity are perse- 
cuted in their turn ; and in a country as densely 
populated as ours, where birds cannot hide them- 
selves from human eyes, such persecution must 
eventually cause their extinction. Meanwhile the 
bird population does not decrease. Every place in 
nature, like every property in Chancery, has more 
than one claimant to it — sometimes the claimants 
are many, — and so long as the dispute lasts all live 
out of the estate. For there are always two or 
more species subsisting on the same kind of food, 
