105 
VI. 
REMARKS OX 
THE “WILD BIRDS’ PROTECTIOX ACT” OF 1872. 
Rv IIe.\uy Steve.vso.v, F.L.S. 
Read 2!jth March, 1873. 
Havinq la.st year occupied some portion of niy Address to the 
members of this Society with the consideration of a ])roposed hill 
for the protection of wild fowl, strongly urging the necessity for 
some such Act being passed to preserve the indigenous species 
therein named, I would further ask your attention whilst I e.xplain 
the circumstances which led to the altered title of that hill, and 
the introduction into the schedule attached, of a large number of 
birds Avhoso protection was never contemplated by the original 
lu-omoters. The bill, entituled “ An Act for the Preservation of 
\\'ild Fowl,” was introduced into the House of Commons by 
IMr. Andrew Johnstone, M.P. for South Essex, and read a first 
time on the 15th of February, 1872 ; but its second reading was 
unavoidably postponed till some time in June. In the meanwhile 
a letter to the Times, by the Baroness Burdett Coutts, on the 
wholesale capture of nightingales in the neighbourhood of London, 
seems to have incited certain small bird protectionists in this 
country to endeavour to convert Mr. Johnstone’s bill to their own 
ends and purposes ; and Mr. Auberon Herbert, as their mouth- 
piece, on the secoml reading carried a resolution to the effect that 
it be suggested to the Committee to extend the provisions of that 
bill to small birds generally.” dhe task thus imposed upon the 
committee was no light one, inasmuch as Mr. Herbert’s “suggestion” 
at once roused that very spirit of opposition from class interests 
which Mr. Johnstone’s bill had been siiecially framed to avoid, and 
to mitigate, therefore, the inevitable wrath of the formers should 
they liiul an Act passed to protect sparrows, the following pro- 
