NATURE NOTES. 
36 
Shall we Eat our Songsters ?— Mrs. Hervey Pechell, whose sojourn in 
Italy brings no forgetfulness of the dangers which threaten bird-life at home, 
sends us a letter on the subject, with an excellent article from the Morning Post 
on the report that song thrushes and other members of the family Tnrdidce are 
being sent to the London market in great numbers for the purpose of human con- 
sumption. The Morning Post says well : “ These birds have become a portion 
of the national life, and over and over again have been worthily commemorated 
in the literature and poetry of the land. It matters little to the world at large 
what kind of creature the leviathan or the megatherium may have been. But an 
England without song thrushes and blackbirds would be all the poorer for their 
loss from every point of view except the strictly commercial. If they are really 
being destroyed for the purposes of the kitchen such a proceeding deserves 
general reprobation.” 
Mr. Edward Clifford, writing to the Standard on “ A Dish of Larks,” 
mounts up to quite lark-like flights of rhetoric. He says he “ would almost as 
soon eat little cherubims 1 ” Quite a safe assertion indeed, for even the wealth 
and ingenuity of the “ City Fathers ” have not yet secured this dish for their 
banquets ; so that Mr. Clifford runs little risk of being called upon to carry out 
his threatened gastronomic audacity. There is much truth in his saying, “ Those 
who devour a singing bird deprive the world not only of the music which comes 
from one throbbing throat, but from fifty future throats.” Mrs. Pechell makes the 
practical suggestion that some Selbornians in London should be asked to inspect 
the birds offered for sale at the poulterers’ shops in order to ascertain what species 
of thrushes are sold for food, and, if song thrushes are found, to inquire from what 
part of England they come, in order, if possible, to stop their wanton destruction. 
The Poisoning of Birds.— Miss M. Hope, Hon. Sec. of the Kensington 
Branch of the Selborne Society, Mrs. E. Phillips, President of the Tunbridge Wells 
S.P.C.A., and Miss Katharine Hills, of Ambleside, write strongly on this subject. 
Mrs. Phillips says : “ In this time of dire distress, the farmers and fruit growers 
of Kent are taking advantage of the hunger of the starving birds to destroy them 
wholesale by scattering poisoned grain over the land and manure heaps. In the 
Crays district alone baskets full of dead poisoned birds have been picked up, as 
much as two baskets being found in one or two large fruit farms in the same 
district on the same day. Is not the laying about of poisonous grain illegal ? and 
if so, is it not the duty of a local authority to investigate the matter ? ” Our fre- 
quent correspondent, Mr. G. T. Rope, who is by no means an uncompromising 
defender of the sparrow, writes : “Above all, I hope the abominable practice of 
poisoning will not be made legal, as the harm done by this means is incalculable 
- — so many innocent and perhaps useful creatures are sure to pick up the poisoned 
grain. Laying poisoned meats for rats and mice has long been general here, and 
I fear that the few weasels, stoats, &c., which escape the keepers are often 
killed from their feeding upon these creatures after they have taken the poison.” 
Newspaper Opinion. — As was noticed in our last number, members of 
the Selborne Society are much to be congratulated on the distinctly Selbornian 
tone of the articles in the daily papers. In addition to the list then given we 
print in the present number extracts from excellent articles in the Morning Post 
and the Echo. We should be very glad to receive from some of our readers 
promises to carefully read some particular paper for the purpose of noting such 
articles and communicating them to us. The Times and the Daily News have 
been already undertaken. Almost the only paper from which we have had no such 
Selbornian article forwarded to us is the Pall Mall Gazette. Indeed a letter 
inserted in that paper seems to give it a very well-deserved slap in the face for 
its attitude in the matter of the extermination of our fauna. “ In your paper I 
read,” says Mr. Reginald Livesey, “Lovers of natural history will be interested 
to know that two wild cats have been shot in Scotland. Without fear of contra- \ 
diction I have no hesitation in asserting that all true lovers of Natural History will 
be thoroughly disgusted at the information.” Of course Mr. Livesey is per- 
fectly right, but the question arises whether the expression quoted represents 
merely a solitary lapse or is characteristic of the general tone of the paper. 
A correspondent, plainly no admirer of “The New Journalism,” has no 
hesitation on this point. He says, “ Doubtless this gushing and versatile exponent 
