BY WAY OF APPENDIX. 
227 
and in all those qualities which boys must possess 
to make virile men ; and to those who would sup- 
press their loved game of football, or deprive it of 
its rough and dangerous character, because a dozen 
or twenty boys and youths are annually killed or 
injured for life, I would say, Better that there 
should be many scores of victims each year than 
that the countless thousands who take part in this 
game should be deprived of its incalculable advan- 
tages. But no one as yet has so much as dreamed 
of interfering with the boys' passion for hunting 
after birds' nests : they are left as free as they ever 
were to seek and to find. They are only forbidden 
— that is to say, the County Councils will have 
the power to forbid — to take and to destroy. 
The experience of my own early life when, as 
a boy, I ran wild in a wild land where nothing 
was protected by law, and when seeking for birds' 
nests was a ruling passion, enables me to say 
that to spare the nests does not make the pursuit 
one whit less fascinating, or healthy, or instructive. 
On the contrary, its charm and benefits are greatly 
increased. At that early period to find a nest was 
always a delight to me, and the feeling was to 
some extent renewed on each subsequent visit paid 
to it. Sometimes there would be as many as thirty 
or forty nests to revisit in order to note progress ; 
and to remember and refind them all in their 
